Blue Diamonds
by X.x.Try.Defying.Gravity.x.X
Summary: Bookverse/Playverse- Almost sixteen year old Elphaba Thropp is going on a journey to the Vinkus while learning tough lessons about friendship, life, growing up, discovering who she truly is and her confusifying feelings for a certain Arjiki tribal prince.
1. First Impressions

Um okay well.. first and foremost I'd like to thank you if you're here reading the intro to my fic and I hope that you'll keep reading. This is my NaNovel for the wonderful (insane) NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) for 2009. My goal: Write a 50k novel in 30 days within November while not failing out of college. Should be fun. Ahem I meeeaann.. I'll be trying to update here as often as I can through the month. This'll be my fifth year attempting nano and I've won all four years before this so I hope I can pull it off again. Obviously this fic is mostly a Wicked fic with some musicalverse elements and some bookverse elements but it very similarly follows the plot of Lion King I love to do fics like that.. it of course won't be a /copy/ of Lion King.. but if you watch the plot you'll see certain elements of it that'll remind you - as a tribute only of course. I don't claim any rights to either works only the original stuff and plot ideas and the insanity etc. Also it's a bit AU cause it stems from another one of my fics so you'll notice differences from this prologue. Elphaba's life remains exactly as it is in the book until she's eleven and there the book and my fic split.. She runs away to live with her Great Grandfather and he is training her (in hopes) of her acknowledging her title of Thropp Third Descending and later taking over for him when he's too old to do it anymore. During this fic he is taking her on a diplomatic visit to the Vinkus because he believes relationships with the Arjiki are important.. and Elphie will of course meet our dear Fiyero and she will get to see his world in a way she never does in the real play/book of Wicked. So I really hope that you enjoy this story where Elphie and Yero both learn a little bit about what it means to grow up and about becoming a good person. There will be adventures with our favorite couple and you will laugh with them and cry with them when the going gets tough and ultimately I hope that this will touch your heart and make you think a bit differently about that tumultuous journey and some of life's hardest lessons that happen when we turn into what we all so wanted to be as kids 'the adults'. Will Elphaba and Fiyero be able to stick it out and save the Arjikis and themselves in the face of danger? You'll only know if you keep reading. Beware.. I'm writing 50k in thirty days I apologize for my grammar mistakes and as for warnings.. right now this fic is rated T, but depending on how it goes it may go up XDD so.. other than that I think I've rambled on quite long enough. Thanks for reading! - Beck

Prologue

The figures were silhouetted up against the colors of a sky which looked as if it were on fire. It was, perhaps, the most beautiful sky that the young woman had seen in all of her life and the strange glow of it cast a beautiful light upon her skin. The sky itself and the land below it seemed to be of two separate entities with a stark color of separation between them. The sky was burning vermillion red above the horizon line. It was the starkest of orangey- reds that the young woman had ever seen. Streaked through it looking of the same pattern as a paint brush dragged carefully across a canvas leaving stringy threads from the bristles was the color of medium orange and hints of yellow. There were orange and yellow clouds. Well, they weren't truly orange and yellow but they were thin and high in the sky and the light of the sun hit them in just such a way that they too looked the colors of the gorgeous sky. It was a wide, vast expanse of vermillion fire in the sky for as far as could be seen with nothing interrupting it. This panorama of sky was all around her like she was standing in the middle of a circular dome of it. Directly bisecting the beauty of the sky was a line, straight across and not broken from its horizontal plane by a single thing or shape – perfectly straight, was the blackest of blacks. Everything below the horizon was perfectly black. The only exception in either of these was the huge, yellow-orange disc of the sun hanging half above it and half having disappeared below. It burned with a fervency that the girl had never seen anywhere else before. She had never seen a sunset that red, nor that beautiful, and certainly not an unobstructed view with nothing in the way before.. It was the most gorgeous sight she had ever seen in her entire life. Even the true colors of the grasses at her feet were muted in soft orange glow. It was obvious at the nearest bits it was green, but everything spreading out around them looked more orange until a few feet away it disappeared into that vast blackness of the horizon line.

The only brokenness of this perfect expanse was the two figures here now mounted on their ponies. The darkness made them look as if they were one with the horses instead of man and beast. It made her grateful for the riding lessons she'd received as a young child that made her able to sit proud and tall on the high back of her horse with the regal man beside her so that she looked as though she belonged with him. Even though the two horses really were nothing to brag about, she still felt proud. They'd come all the way from the Gillikin/Vinkus border after all so all of them were looking a bit the worse for the wear after so many days of travel. There had been no place to really clean up and he had warned her not to expect the kind of grand palaces and manor houses in the Vinkus that she was used to when they went on Diplomatic visits within the Emerald city or Munchkinland or especially the Gillikin. She shifted a bit in her saddle and looked at the man beside her carefully.

He was a tall man and well built with the same kind of slender build that she posessed. He rode well with his back straight as a ramrod and comfortable in his saddle. He had a pale complexion that was covered right now by a slight tan from their travel in the increasingly warm sun and temperatures of moving westward. He had a broad forehead and kind, gentle eyes of a slate grey. They could look warm or, when he was angry, look as cold as frozen water in the midst of a harsh winter. His hair was silvery-white from age and he wore it pulled back in a queue tied at the nape of his neck that was a few inches long. His posture was perfect and his clothes were always impeccable, pressed and starched so he could look as if he'd come from an important meeting when he might have been taking tea and listening to the radio. He had large hands that had a gentle touch to them and perfectly kempt nails. His smile was a bit crooked and he had a dimple in the middle of his chin that had not been passed to the girl beside him.

The girl was tall of a similar shape as the man beside her but not as tall, though she did stand at an impressive five feet eight inches and in the next two years she would gain two more inches before she stood at her full adult height. She was also extremely thin. More so than him even by proportion of teenage girl to older man she was still thinner than he. Her body was angles all angles and no curves, something she despaired of ever gaining now that she was going to be sixteen in less than two months. She had long, lithe legs and narrow hips, almost flat really. Her waist was slender and her chest small enough she could have masqueraded as a boy if she so chose, but some of her features – such as her graceful, slender neck and face were so clearly beautiful and feminine it detracted from the despair of missing hourglass figure she so desired. Her face was regal and slender with clearly defined high cheekbones and a long, very straight nose. Her lips were slender and feminine and her smile was a shade crooked just as his was. Her eyes were very serious and wide, deep chocolate brown in color with a few flecks of hazel in them and ringed by thick lashes. Her brows were thin and expressive in the expanse of her face. Her ears were delicate and there was a small puncture hole in the lobe of each, filled now, as usual, with a set of tiny pearls given her by the man beside her when she was twelve years old when she had begged him to allow her to have her ears done and he had (reluctantly) agreed, mumbling something about girls ought to be waiting until they were at least fifteen for earrings. Her hair was of a very deep deep brown (nearly black) and it hung in thick lengths down her back to her waist. Currently it was braided and pinned up to keep the dust from their travels from getting into it, however. Her hands were small and delicate, folded loosely about the reins of her horse, concealed in riding gloves that matched her deep blue riding habit. She truly was a beautiful young woman, though with one slightly unorthodox characteristic. Her skin, for however smooth and perfect it was (she didn't have a single blemish on it save the scars on her knees from falling in gravel as a child) was not like anyone else's she had ever met. It was the color of new spring leaves, of dark green grass. This color was perfectly unbroken all over save the dusky grayish-violet color of her lips and the shading of the same in her eyelids. However, the color of her skin was strange enough that it was always the first thing people noticed, and only a careful observer bothered to look past it and see the earnest determination within the young woman and that was the true beauty.

"Look there Fabala. Everything out in front of us for as far as your eye can see, all of that is the Vinkus." Came the voice of the old man. "This ends the Grasstrail train." He said softly, putting his hand over his eyes to shade them so he could see further into the light.

The duo was certainly a fairly odd one, even in Oz where everything was a little bit.. well.. unique. Even in such a place as this, they were a bit odd, you had to know the history to understand how the young woman had come to hold such a special place in his heart. After all, being an old man and alone, life had not afforded Peerless Thropp many chances to love until his great granddaughter Elphaba had entered his life. His wife had died early and his granddaughters one had been sickly and died in early adulthood and the other, Elphaba's mother, had died several years before giving birth to her third child, Elphaba's brother Shell. He had been alone until Elphaba's arrival and he thanked the Unnamed God every day for bringing her into his lonely life and giving him a reason to continue living again, a reason to be hopeful that he had not spent his entire life struggling to make something good for his family only to have them run away and throw his gifts of toil, a life spent working hard for them, right back in his face because they didn't want it. Elphaba had given him faith that the world really was still good, something that had been lacking in him up until this last five years. He had honestly begun to doubt that. She had changed all that.. and she had needed his love too, after her family's ignorance and how they had hated her for being different… They needed each other then and still did now and that was the plain truth of it. They had each taught each other more than they wanted to admit because both were mutually stubborn, having similar personalities as well as the shared blood that ran through their veins and, perhaps, Peerless hoped, the same destiny. He had struggled to make something of Munchkinland with his time as Eminent Thropp in hopes that Elphaba, the Thropp third descending now, would one day take his place and lead the state in a way that he would have wanted.

"Come on, I'm an old man Elphie and all of this traveling isn't settling well with my old joints I'll tell you. Haven't been out here since I was a young man and believe me I'm going to be feeling some muscles I didn't know I had tomorrow morning, mark my words." He said with an affection nudge of his shoulder to hers. "And that.. I think may be our escort." He nodded far down the bluff where another horse and rider had appeared, looking the size of a pin dot compared to the rest of the landscape around them. He sat tall on his horse as well, and it didn't wear a saddle or bridle but just a blanket. He was riding barebacked. As the man came closer to them, his features became more clear to Elphie, who trembled in disbelief at his sheer size. Even from his seated position on the horse she could tell he was a good half a foot or more taller than her. Little did she know, most Arjiki men were well over six feet in height. His skin was dark like well oiled leather and he looked to be perhaps five or six years older than herself. Across his chest and his shoulders were a very obvious kind of diamond shaped pattern in startling blue that actually stood out, even against his dark skin. She didn't know how it was possible, though she did guess that the diamond pattern was tattooed into his skin. Despite the strange tribal markings, he was handsome with a kind of foreign beauty that Elphaba had only imagined. He seemed to hold mysteries – this whole place was full of them and it gave her shivers and sent her natural curious streak into overdrive. She wanted, suddenly, a deep seated need within her spurring her on, to know about this place and to understand it truly know it. It was a quality in her that her Grandfather kept telling her meant she would make a good leader. Elphaba didn't know if she would ever make a good Eminent Thropp, but she couldn't bear to break the old man's heart by saying so. She would rather die trying.

The man's head was shaved like most here and he wore skin pants and no shirt- she noticed this straight off, as well as his strong muscled body, strong enough to have snapped her in two if he so desired, luckily he was smiling and seemed friendly, his dark eyes as curious as Elphaba's own though polite enough to keep his questions in check. She felt surprise and mollified when he barely glanced at her skin. Most people stared so much it made her want to shed it like a snake. The man's smile was compelling though and so was his wave and his greeting in the dialect spoken in Munchkinland rather than Arjiki (for which she was grateful since she didn't speak it save a few words and polite phrases). "Hello and welcome. You enter the land of the Arjiki tribe now." He said, his accent warm and his voice different from any Elphaba had ever heard before. Peerless had been here before and knew many of the customs, but it was all new for her.

"My name is Kayin I will be your guide to the present place our tribe is camped. You have no need to fear now our tribe is glad of your visit and much ready to speak with you." He said.

"I thank you for riding out all of this way to escort us." Peerless said with a nod.

"It was my pleasure. I hope that both our peoples will come to benefit from this visit and that you will both enjoy your time here."

Elphaba spoke now for the first time, "I already am. This is the most lovely place I have ever seen and I have been here a sum total of twenty minutes." She whispered in awe.

Kayin nodded, "It puts you in perspective of your real place in the universe to be in such a place as this."

"That it does." Peerless agreed, still gazing at the skyline as the sun sunk lower towards the black horizon line.

"We should go, for it does not due to be out on the open plain alone after dark when more formidable things are also up and about. Come and we will have a grand feast and you will both have the chance to get cleaned up and refreshed. I daresay such an opportunity will be welcome after this journey for I have heard it is no small one."

Elphaba and Peerless exchanged an obviously relieved glance and each gave their horses a gentle nudge in the flank with a renewed kind of vigor only brought about by the promise of a good meal and a bath and the beauty of this place could bring about. Already she knew, as she looked around, that this land called the Vinkus was special.. more special than any place she had ever been and she knew there were going to be wonderful adventures here…


	2. New Traditions

~*~

_There is far too much to take in here _

_More to find than can ever be found _

_But the sun rolling high Through the sapphire sky _

_Keeps great and small on the endless round_

~*~

Both figures were much relieved when they began to see that the horizon was broken by what looked to Elphaba very much like large trees with dresses spreading out around their trunks in the shadows of the sunset- multitudes of them. However, the closer that they got, and as she shifted herself in her saddle to be able to see the strange sight better for herself, they arrived at a tall bluff overlooking what was instantly recognizable below them as the Arjiki camp. What had looked like trees from the back of her horse she realized were massive white tents.

The tents made a wide circle in what looked to be directly the middle of the vast plain spreading out below the rise they currently positioned on. Everything was flat beyond them for as far as the eyes could see, save the swaying yellow grasses that looked like they would be at least waist height to wade through. The tents themselves were ringed outwardly by several large wagons covered in the same white material as the tents were made of, but they looked more efficiently built for this kind of terrain than those that the Grasstrail train took from Elphaba's observations of the journey. After all, the Arjiki people were indigenous to the Vinkus and they had obviously learned to adapt to the surrounding environs. It was an environment that few could have managed without the proper training, she was realizing this quickly.

These tents that Elphaba could see were all of a similar shape with a tall point in the center and then two points to either side that were a little shorter than the center making a central area and two smaller portions to each side. The material was currently glowing almost pink in color with the kisses of the setting sun upon it. The only exception to this rule of shape was the tent in the very center, which was a large circular one which stood apart from the others due to its sheer size. It could have easily rivaled the downstairs portion of Colwen Grounds' manor house where Elphaba and Peerless lived, and such a thing was no small feat given that the house was exceptionally large. Her dark eyes grew in excitement and further curiosity as she took it all in.

Kayin smiled at her expression, seeming to find it amusing that she looked so overcome and shocked, though not in a negative way. "It is quite astonishing to see the way our people live for the first time is it not, Miss?" he asked.

Elphaba just nodded, "Just Elphaba." She said rather put off and surprised. She still hadn't adjusted to people calling her Miss or recognizing that she had officially agreed to take on the title of Thropp Third Descending, making her the heir to the Eminency in Munchkinland. Even five years with her grandfather had left her still surprised when people recognized her as someone important or paid attention to her. Back at home that had never happened unless in a bad way. Nessarose had been the one that got all of her father's attention from Elphie's earliest memories, she was the second thought. Kayin just gave her a friendly smile and nodded, he would remember that she preferred just to be addressed by her name. He always said that you could tell the good kind of leader or the stuffy kind by if they required a lot of formalities. The girl seemed a bit quiet but certainly intelligent and competent. The Eminent Thropp himself had not been here in Kayin's lifetime, but he'd heard many stories, primarily that the man was the best of the provincial rulers that had been seen in a long time. He respected other cultures and it seemed he had taught his granddaughter to do the same. At least that was Kayin's perception from stories, but he was quite enthused to get the chance to meet the man and his mysterious great granddaughter himself, for the couple had been the talk of Arjiki gossip and story the entire summer leading up to now.

Elphaba's eyes were wide with wonder as they neared the camp and she began to realize just how large the tents were. Even the grandiose size of the middle one that had appeared to be the size of Colwen Grounds' downstairs seemed to be magnified when they actually went around the bluff and down its side to be in the midst of the camp. Delicious smells, not of which were recognizable, accosted her nose and she took some deep breaths. The scent of food mingled with the delicious smells of fresh grass. The Land of Oz had been suffering from the drought for so long that Elphaba had nearly forgotten what a lot of fresh summer grass smelled like. The Vinkus had aquifers under much of it and thus did not greatly suffer from drought as did some parts of Oz (especially the Quadling).

She shifted her eyes around the camp taking in the other sights as she acclimated herself to her new location. Kayin led their horses through the camp of white and as they moved through the labyrinth like maze of tents with their flaps swaying lightly in the small breeze she saw small faces begin to appear at the break in the material at each tent, staring curiously up at them. All of the eyes made her feel distinctly awkward, but she did her best to merely ignore it. No one spoke, but she noticed the further they went they began to pick up a following of the youngsters following. These children looked to be all under perhaps eleven or twelve years of age with the median being perhaps six or seven. They were all dressed similarly the boys in skin pants the same as Kayin's and either shirtless or with long, loose shirts made of a kind of light tan colored cloth some shades darker than the white of the tents. The girls wore either pants just like those of the boys or flowing knee length dresses of the same material as the boys' shirts (it looked very soft and very comfortable to Elphie and she was slightly envious of their freedom to run and play in the grass.) Of course, little did she know yet, these clothes were a necessity in this part of Oz to combat the stifling temperatures of mid day in the Vinkus. Arriving in the sunset it was not nearly as warm as it had been in the stifling heat of mid-afternoon.

Elphaba smiled softly at the children, unable to resist their wide, white toothed smiles. Each of them had the same dark, rich color of skin as the boy on the horse in front of them, though in varying shades of darkness from a cinnamon to so dark as to being almost black. She also noticed in her keen observations that none of the small ones had the diamonds, which she supposed did make sense, who would tattoo a child after all? She looked quietly over her shoulder at them surprised as she realized that, as they gained number, the children were singing. "What are they saying?" Elphaba asked her Grandfather quietly, knowing that he was fairly familiar with the Arjiki language from visits here previously before she had ever come to Colwen Grounds.

He and Kayin both moved to speak at the same time, but he deferred to the younger man. "It is a song of honor, of respect for a leader. They sing it to honor yourself and the Eminent Thropp, Miss Elphaba." He said, grinning at her impishly, though still in a friendly way as he attached the Miss to the front of her preferred name, which just caused her cheeks to turn a shade deeper emerald, her personal form of blushing. Outside of the main tent in the back there was a giant spit over a fire over which meat was being seared. To Elphaba it looked like a whole cow, though Kayin assured her it was one of the large wildebeests that roamed this open land. One of the Arjiki hunters had brought it back that very morning. The smell of the meat churning on the spit reminded her that their rations on the Grasstrail Train had certainly been lacking as they had traveled incognito much of the way. They had had nothing fresh for weeks and her mouth watered, her stomach growling so loudly that it made her blush even deeper.

Peerless and Kayin both exchanged a smirk, "You'll have to excuse us for I'm afraid it's been a long journey and our fair has been meager at best. We've been fortunate most days to have sourdough biscuits and the roots and berries from the trail and dried jerky if we can get it. We're not afraid of a little hardship and roughing it but it can get tiresome after the first days of such an existence."

"I certainly don't blame you for I find myself more than ready to return to my comfortable hammock and a nice meal after a few days hunting." Kayin said.

Finally they drew to be some feet from the main tent, which they could see into as the flaps were swept wide and tied in such a way that they could see into it. Within the huge tent there were long rows of blankets woven in beautiful bright colors spread on the ground and hundreds of people had gathered here and were sitting cross legged on the blankets. At the far end of the only room of the tent she could see (for it had several rooms) there was a large chair made of what looked like woven vine and twine which was erected above any other seat in the room. A woman sat there, though Elphaba could not see her well due to the dimness inside of the tent. The inside was ringed with little lanterns strung from the main pole, but these had yet to be lit. Adjacent to the makeshift throne, for that was what she realized it was, there was a long trestle table. The table looked as though it had been put together in just that afternoon and would be taken apart again when they picked up camp to follow the herds of wildebeest, gazelle, and antelope that were here. The table stretched several feat – as long as three of this giant young man beside her for certain, and contained so many dishes of food. Elphaba didn't think she had ever seen that much food in her entire life. These people had adjusted to being able to do the best of everything while traveling across the plains of their vast land. No wonder they must think Ozian culture so very odd! Her eyes widened at the sheer amount of the food and she could only pick out a handful of things from this distance: ears of corn still in their husks which were burnt from being cooked directly in the fire wrapped in leaves and then split open, nuts, peas, cabbage, cassava, rice, beans fixed a million different ways, plates full of salted and peppered kale sliced open, a large dressed bird of some sort, spinach and meat, lemons and limes and oranges piled high in a big bowl, cooked apples stewing on some simmering coals, lentil stew, bright peppers and gourds and onions and tomatoes and relishes, some kind of filleted crab, prawn and oyster on the shell, melons so ripe and juicy it looked as though you could have squirted the juice across the tent, okra and collard greens, groundnut stew, skewers of delicious looking chunks of meet and bright vegetables, grains and loaves of dark bread and what looked very much to Elphaba like a crocodile, still mostly intact. Those were the things she actually recognized or guessed that she recognized. Everything else was unrecognizable Vinkus food that she couldn't place and didn't seem to have a Munchkinlander equivalent.

"It looks amazing." She said appreciatively. "Both of us would like to think you all for your trouble to make things so nice for us and I am sure that our visit here will lead to much cooperation and partnership between our peoples." She said, shooting a nervous look over at Peerless with a silent question in her eyes as if to say 'how was that?' and he merely nodded with a small smile on his face. He approved. However, her next movement was far from as suave. She noticed, vaguely, that the woman had descended from her vine chair and come to the front of the tent. Two bearers behind her waved large leafy branches to cool her. It was the perfect mixture of refreshing informality and royalty mixed to Elphaba's mind. She was quite a bit shorter than the taller men and was dressed in a long summer style dress with no sleeves that pooled at her feet. It was black with bright green leaves and yellow flowers on it and she had a crown of the same yellow flowers woven into her black hair. Her hair was as thick as Elphaba's own but even a darker black and was done up in an intricate kind of braid. Her eyes were deep and black as shoe leather with pinpricks of light in them. Her arms were covered with gold spangled bracelets and rings; she wore no shoes, but she did have toe and ankle rings of the same gold as those on her arms. She had high, clearly defined cheekbones similar to Elphaba's but a rounder face, had more curves. She wasn't as thin as Elphaba either and appeared to be perhaps middle aged.

Her gaze flicked to the boy that had joined the woman, though he hung back somewhat in the fringes of the tent. She could still see him however. He was taller than she and perhaps her age or a year older if that. He had had his hair shaved, but there were no diamonds, she noticed, maybe all grown men didn't have diamonds then? She filed this information away for future reference. He had the woman's cheekbones, but his eyes were of a lighter brown and his face was much more chiseled. He had strong shoulders and muscles and he wore skin pants decorated with design in quills and paint and little beads. He wore a shirt with no sleeves in it that showed off his strong arms and muscles. She detected something kind about the face and something familiar as well, but she couldn't quite place it.

Elphaba shifted to get down from her horse, lifting her foot over the saddle, as neither she or Peerless knew how to ride bareback, and moved to swing herself down, but her foot had not yet touched the ground when the other toe of her black boot slipped right out of the stirrup. Of course, the next actions were too fast a course to prevent as Elphaba slipped, the edge of her dress got caught on the saddle and stuck there revealing a white flash of undergarments and her stockings at the same time as her chin smashed into the saddle so hard she bit her tongue to the point of tasting the iron rust of blood. Her hands scrabbled crazily for something to hold onto but she found nothing and there followed a painful smash as she landed face down on the ground underneath the horse, which stamped loudly and whinnied, highly spooked and tore off through the clearing and into the burning sunset.

There was a deadly silence around the circle of people in the little clearing as Elphaba slowly sat up and leaned over and spat in the dirt by her – a mixture of the sand now coating the inside of her mouth and blood from having bit her tongue so hard. She looked up and was surprised and somewhat hurt to see the boy next to the royal woman was grinning. It wasn't really a mean grin she realized, albeit her wounded pride told her that any kind of a grin was not favorable given what had just happened to her.

Peerless was even grinning by now and, eventually, even Elphaba offered a rueful smile as Kayin offered a hand to help her off the ground and she took it gratefully and pulled herself to her feet. "We weren't sure if you would prefer to freshen up before you ate or not.." Kayin said with a small smile as if to explain the feast that was across the tent from them.

The two exchanged a short glance before Peerless spoke. "I believe we will take the food. Neither of us have anything but sourdough and dried jerky for weeks." He said as they moved towards the tent as Elphaba attempted to inconspicuously brush the dust off of the backseat of her dress while no one was watching her.

Elphaba's eyes took a few moments to adjust to the strange, dim light within the tents, but soon it seemed hardly necessary as boys ran around lighting the little lanterns that were strung to the upper portion of the tent and the inside of it began to come alive with the chattering of people. Elphaba felt pleased that, aside of the littlest children who were seated apart from the adults in their own area of the tent, no one stared at her odd verdigris. However, a good deal of the beginning of the meal she was left quite to her own devices, a couple of men swept Peerless off to another blanket to sit with them and she remembered his stories of coming here as a child with his own parents much the way he was bringing her here to learn about the other cultures of their world. Peerless believed that it was important to truly try to understand people if you wanted to have a successful diplomatic relationship with them and Elphaba felt that she understood where this idea had come from. How could you ever, for example, expect to talk to the Arjikis about problems of crowding within the Emerald city when the majority of them had never seen it and they lived in a place like this where the land was empty but for grass and sky and animals as far as they eye could see. How did you explain to them there was such a lack of water that people were starving when the grass here grew verdant and green in the rainy season when the land practically overflowed with water. In the dry season when the grasses were parched and faded yellow there were always natural wells and aquifers to get water from if you knew where to find them. The Arjikis followed the same migratory path every dry season, Peerless told her, and their camps were in the same locations every year. In the winter they settled in one area and remained. The Arjiki clan leader, the chief, had a large stone castle called Kiamo Ko that he had requisitioned generations back from the Ozian government. Elphaba thought, ironically, that Peerless had said at one time it had been a waterworks plant. No matter what, the place was beautiful and she had been here a very short time but yet she knew she would not regret the weeks that it had taken to get here. She understood, perhaps better than the majority of Ozians, that just being different didn't make you a freak. Aside from her green skin which would set anyone apart, she had been born in the wilds of nowhere Munchkinland inside an infernal clock that was the epitome of the pleasure faith and had almost resulted in the death of her strict Unionist Minister father, Frex, and then had been carted around with her family through the Quadling on Frex's mission to try to bring religion to the lives of the poor Quadling people, who were too polite to tell him they weren't interested in his religion or his morals. It was something that Elphaba had seen in a starling clear light by the time she was eleven years old, but Frex had never been able to see it… you couldn't make everyone like you- people are all different and if you wanted to work with someone you had to be able to accept him as a different person from yourself and embrace those changes and capabilities. It was what Elphaba was hoping she would take home from this place at the end of their diplomatic visit: understanding.

Kayin leaned towards Elphaba quietly, "These tribal dinners are a great deal, but I can see that the women have outdone themselves more than usual with yours and His Eminence's arrival."

"They didn't need to go to so much trouble." She responded a bit stiffly.

"Well don't ever tell an Arjiki that. The women are exceptionally proud of their hospitality and it's considered a grievous offense not to go to the utmost trouble for a guest in your home- personal feelings or not. So to say something like that would look quite terrible to an Arjiki. They do not understand Ozian customs sometimes, especially the housewives and mothers who never had the opportunity to visit your Oz."

She shivered slightly at how he said that 'her' Oz. "And how is it that you come to know the customs so well?" she inquired politely as possible, though an itching curiosity was burning within her to know the answer to that specific question.

"Oh.. my parents sent me to Shiz when I was sixteen. I was fortunate enough to sent my entrance exams a full year before they let most students. I attended two full terms there."

"You didn't go back the next year?" she inquired.

"No… My parents died and I have four sisters, someone had to provide for them and so I remained home. I don't expect I will probably ever go back to Oz, but it was a good experience at the time."

Elphaba was so abashed by the land mine she had somehow managed to step into that she avowed she wouldn't speak for the rest of the evening and quietly dedicated herself to staring at the plate of food she had been filling as they moved through the line at the trestle table and then took seats on the colorful woven blankets amongst the others who were similar to their age. Elphaba didn't know their names, but the blanket Kayin and she had seated themselves on was ringed with perhaps four boys and at least double the amount of girls. She would learn through the coming days that Kayin was one of the most eligible young men in the camp and wherever he was… a line of Arjiki hopefuls were likely to follow, though he seemed not even to notice this.

It was not long at all before one of the men moved toward Elphaba and offered her a large slab of some kind of meat. She would not have been able to place this unidentified meat if not for having seen the platter it was being served from. It was part of the crocodile she had seen earlier, for up close there was no doubting what it was as the specimen had been well preserved in its shape even through the cooking process, whatever that had been. The meat itself that had been carved from the animal was a white in appearance and seemed to have come, at least this portion, out of the tail. The man said something that Elphaba did not understand and Kayin responded for her. Reading between the lines, Elphaba could guess that Kayin had been telling the man Elphaba didn't know the Arjiki language because he then said in uneasy Ozian dialect, "You would be liking some, miss?" though he accent was unsure and his words strange (they reminded Elphaba almost of the speech of the Quadlings), his smile was warm and his eyes bright with the vigor of life.

"No.. thank you." She murmured, looking at the meat with a raised eyebrow. Arjiki delicacy or not given how rare it was to find a lagoon with crocodile population and the risk that was brought from attempting to kill and retrieve one of these animals, she wasn't sure she was brave enough to try it.

Kayin looked at her with an askance smile, "You don't like crocodile? It's a shame for its very good- tastes a little like chicken and crab- very tender." He reached over for one of the cuts of meat and snapped it into his mouth whole. Teenage boys certainly knew how to eat and such a thing could never be doubted by anyone. Elphaba thought that he looked something like that animal must have looked gobbling down an antelope when it had been alive and she wondered what _its _last supper had consisted of. It wasn't that Elphaba was particularly opposed to eating animals but… crocodile?

She shifted awkwardly and tried not to think about what he had been eating instead focusing on the other diners in the large group. Particularly the young man that had been standing nearest who she now recognized as the Arjiki tribal leader, Baxiana Tigelaar. She had scant memories of the woman from their visit to Colwen Grounds some years previous. She had been more interested in their son the tribal prince Fiyero. She hadn't really been interested in the stuffy concerns of the adult world then. She briefly remembered that Baxiana had not been the ruler then, but what was referred to as Queen Consort- the Chief King's wife and the mother of his heirs. She was unsure where the King was, though he didn't seem to be here and she briefly remember Peerless having received the news in a letter months old that had been lost in the mail train that Marillot had been killed in a stampede on a hunting party and that Peerless was invited to come to the memorial service. He had been in a bad mood for some time after as Marillot had been a dear friend from the time they had met as boys when Marillot himself was a tribal prince and Peerless had been preparing for his own rise to the Eminent Thropp position.

She was still focused on the young man when he abruptly stood from the blanket where he had been sitting near his mother and another man whom Elphaba didn't recognize. Her dark eyes continued to follow him as he began his trek across the tent. It wasn't until almost too late that she realized he was making his way towards her. When he arrived near where she was sitting, everyone had turned to see where the young man was headed. She looked up at him with an emerald blush creeping into her cheeks as she watched him curiously and a bit nervously. He bowed slightly and extended his hand to her, sweeping it around the tent, palm open. This seemed to be some kind of a signal because a still hush fell over the other occupants of the tent as they ceased to speak and, instead, devoted their attention to this figure. From somewhere in the background a quiet percussion of fists hitting drums began and the sound of what seemed to be woodwind instruments of some sort that she had never heard in the environs of Oz before. It was a sweet kind of music with a yearning note to it. She watched him curiously as he moved to the cleared space and began to dance slowly at first, twisting his body in rhythmical patterns that followed the music. His feet were bare and stamped on the grass as he began to move faster in tune with the tempo of the percussion on the large skin covered drums in the back. Elphaba could not tell if the drums were moving with his speed or him following their lead so seamless was the transition as he moved faster and faster. Soon he had begun to spin round and round and the sound of maracas shaking was added to the tempo of the music as he shook his legs out, causing the beads to flash in the firelight. His skin seemed to glow in the burnished kind of light from the flames. She shivered, her eyes drawn to his form and unable to leave it as though he were a magnet and she were mere iron shavings. Faster and faster he moved and she could feel her heart beating practically out of control. Her breath came in ragged gasps and she was losing touch with her surroundings completely beginning to whirl into a strange world of rushing and sound and color. It felt somewhat like she was inside a kaleidoscope she'd been given as a child from one of the Quadlings and it was both fear and joy and amazement. Her attention was so rapt upon him that she might have been under some kind of an enchantment as he danced, seemingly just for her, and the world spun away from her too quickly. Normally she might have been scared, but even now she was too overcome to be truly scared.

The tempo of the music reached a fever pitch as he spun and bent into odd proportions and he began to chant- the strange words of which she recognized only her name and that of her Grandfather's. His eyes met hers and they were gleaming bright in the eerie light here making her heart catch and skip crazily in a way she couldn't understand even if she had wanted to. She became aware of the pulse point in his neck that seemed to be pounding almost equally with her own heart. And then the music hit its breaking point and dropped off into a quiet lull as he slowly began to still his body like a toy top running out of energy, though with far more grace than such a toy had ever been able to bring until he was standing still in front of her, head bowed, eyes focused on his feet. When he did look up again, their eyes met for a long moment and though no words were expressed, she had the disconcerting feeling that he could see through her, right into her soul in some way she couldn't begin to explain. When she moved she noticed that her hands were shaking uncontrollably and her face was flushed. She swallowed a couple of times as he moved to sit back down in his place and the quiet reigned.

It was quite some time before she had the courage to speak, "What was that?"

One of the boys at their blanket guffawed loudly, "That was Yero's getting a little complex about your royal self." The comment, which Elphaba didn't understand in the least, earned the boy a glare from Kayin which made him quiet almost immediately.

"It was a dance of honor for your position in which he was introducing yourself and His Eminence to those who are here in attendance tonight and asking the Spirits to honor us with good favor and you with safety while you are in our lands. I wouldn't become too worried about it for it was just a custom of honor as our guest. Yero's never exactly showed any interest in settling down." Kayin responded. Elphaba wasn't sure whether to feel relieved or a bit disappointed at this information. This made several times in the same night that she had, to some degree, made a complete fool of herself.

Her quick eyes continued to journey around the tent taking in everything that happened and remaining fairly quiet and keeping to herself as was her custom. Some of the people sitting near her attempted to engage her in conversation after the dance, but, Elphaba, true to her introverted nature, said little in return. She felt too tired and too overcome to truly attempt to make conversation. Whatever she said here would be considered and might ultimately impact the success of their trip and it did need to be success with the turmoil in central Oz currently affecting everything. This visit was important and it couldn't be her fault it didn't succeed because she said something ridiculous or laughable, moreover, she wasn't particularly in the mood to embarrass herself once again as she had done earlier falling off the back of the horse – which still hadn't been returned to her knowledge and, likely, never would be. It always took Elphaba a little while to warm up and become acquainted with a situation before she felt comfortable enough to get to know others and interact with them. She could tell that this was her Grandfather's natural preoccupation as well, but years of practice had taught him to be as diplomatic as the finest of rulers and no one but Elphaba, who knew him best in the world, would have ever guessed that he was shy or that he was carefully sliding the bits of proffered crocodile onto the ground for the waiting mouths of the dogs who definitely didn't seem to mind the rather questionable nature of the offering….

_________

_Did anyone sides me have major shivers during the dance? LOL I was totally like had the chills. This chapter was fun to write.. esp my visualization of Elphie falling off the horse. Some reviews would be nice so I know how this is going :) So far mission successful Nano number five is ahead of schedule!_


	3. Happiness for Happiness Sake

_~*~_

_If there's so much I must be _

_Can I still just be me _

_The way I am? _

_Can I trust in my own heart _

_Or am I just one part _

_Of some big plan?_

_~*~_

By the time the feast had ended, Elphaba felt as though her eyes were as heavy as if each lid weighed nearly ten pounds. She struggled to keep herself from yawning. It wasn't that the food hadn't been good- in fact it had been absolutely delicious, or that the company hadn't been good, for everyone had been friendly towards her on the attempts they had made to talk to her, aside of one girl that sat at their blanket who just seemed to be intent on ignoring her altogether. It was comfortable and deliciously warm here. Colwen Grounds was so large that it often became chilly in the later hours of the day, even during the summer and this was the reason so many of the rooms had large fireplaces to help warm the house. However, despite all of these comforts, by the time the men started to play their tribal music and the younger couples began to drift off to their own devices, Elphaba could barely keep her eyes open any longer and she was definitely beginning to drift. More than once she felt herself start awake the way one is wont to do if they are sitting on a comfortable blanket against a warm bale of summer grass serving the purpose of a bench to lean up against or sit on. She felt herself move her hand up to rub her eyes thinking that maybe falling asleep in the middle of a tribal celebration meant for herself and Peerless' honor probably wasn't the best of ideas, but my she was tired. She looked quietly about the room in hopes of spotting her Grandfather's prominent silvery hair which stood out here more than anywhere else. She did see him and he hardly appeared tired or concerned. He and Baxiana and one of the older warriors were carrying on in that confuifying tongue known as Arjiki. Some of the words she could pick out as her Grandfather had been trying to teach her on their journey, but her level was certainly elementary at best and she could have no sooner spoke the language than she might have hopped in the lake and gone for a swim. Luckily, it seemed almost everyone here, though in varying degrees of ability, spoke the Ozian dialect. Elphaba hoped that maybe she would make friends here so that someday when she returned for diplomatic visits _The is if I don't make a complete and bloody fool of myself. _She thought ruefully, she would have someone to talk with the way Peerless was right now instead of being on her own and not really knowing what to say or to whom.

However, it didn't take long for her companions to begin to tire as well and it was not long before one of the men whom Elphaba recognized as being a member of the Tribal Council (the twelve warriors of highest honor in the tribe that helped the Queen Consort (or King) make decisions for the tribe. Truthfully, the monarch had the most power and everyone knew it, but most of the Arjiki rulers were kind enough that they cared to listen to their tribal council and often had meetings with them on important things. The Tribal Council was also in charge of readying for battle, the safety of the tribe, and the protection of the leader and his family. Of course, they were not really in danger from any of their own tribes members but that didn't really go for other tribes who might not be on the friendliest terms with the Arjikis. In other words, they were some of the most important men in the tribe next to the elders. The elders were the old warriors who no longer fought in battle but were thought to be some of the wisest members simply because they had been around for so long and had seen so many generations of Arjiki pass under their eyes and conscious thoughts.

"Miss Thropp, we've arranged for you to say in a tent with some of our girls right here in the main camp, we're sure that you'll find the accommodations quite nice and we've taken the liberty of moving your things into the tent with the girls' things. We are pleased that you have not brought so many things because, even though we aren't currently planning to move camp, you can never tell how long you will be in one place in these sort of months I'm afraid. You have done well to pack manageably and lightly."

She looked down. "Thank you." She said softly. _Who would have guessed I did something right. _She thought to herself as she looked around at those sitting on the blanket with her.

"You're quite welcome. If you would like to come with me I would be glad to show you where you are staying to give you a little bit of time to put yourself to rights before your future tent mates arrive for the evening."

She could only nod and got to her feet with a still tired expression as she followed the man across the tent to the entrance, too tired and too physically exhausted and in too much pain from having fallen off the horse to really worry about the fact that she was going to be in a tent with several girls she didn't know. She had been warned that this was how families lived in the tribe. Each family occupied a tent until the children were in their mid to late teens. For boys by the time they were thirteen or so they were out of the family tent and into a tent with other boys of a similar age- generally friends of their own age. Sometimes a few months before a boy's coming of age he was allowed to have a tent to his own, but that was only for a little while. Girls generally remained in their mother's tents to help with the younger children for a longer time than the boys did, perhaps a further two or three years if there were a lot of siblings. Elphaba had originally thought sending the children off to live on their own at thirteen was ridiculous, but Peerless had explained they weren't truly alone, they still often ate with their families and went on hunting parties, they merely slept alone thus giving them a little time to interact with boys of their own age and to branch out into the men they would become someday. The boys who had their Blue Diamonds were sent to live either alone or with a smaller group of boys and became less a part of the family still – obviously depending upon how close knit they were and how much they were looking forward to freedom. From this older circle of boys they moved on to marry and have their own family tent and the process began again. Of course, Elphaba didn't know all of these details yet, merely that as teens the boys lived on their own with interaction in their family tents more restricted than when they were children to give them a chance to branch out on their own a little while before they were to support their own families.

However, Elphaba wasn't sure how she felt about sharing a room with a bunch of strange girls. She had not shared a room since she had shared with Nessarose as a child and that had been her sister. What would it be like with a bunch of girls who she had never met and who didn't understand her and who she didn't understand. She knew better than to complain and shot a venomous look at her Grandfather across the room. He met her eyes and gave her a serene smile and a small shrug. It was only by knowing her well that Elphaba easily interpreted exactly what that smile meant – he thought this experience would be good for her and he had okayed it! This day was just getting worse as time passed. Why on earth did Peerless think that being in a tent with a bunch of strange girls would be a good experience! All Elphaba though that it had the potential to do was be embarrassing. There was a difference between making friends and being a little too close for comfort. Nevertheless, she dutifully stood and followed the man. Five years of living with Peerless and, indeed, Frex before him, had taught Elphaba that you did not question your elders. Peerless, she particularly would not consider questioning because she knew he truly had her best motives at heart. He would never have made a decision if he had nothing to base it on, not that it meant she was particularly grateful about this set up whether or not it would somehow be to her benefit in the future.

The man led her through the dark camp without the aid of a lantern. The moon was bright tonight and it made the low plains with no trees except behind them to the east from whence they had come, look full of light. In an eerie way it was almost light daytime but with a muted kind of half light which was bright enough to guide them through the enormous white swags of material that made up the tents. As they arrived at the one that Elphaba would be staying in she mutinously realized that her Grandfather would likely be staying in the elders' tent with his old friends and was probably going to be having a grand old time. She let out such a breath that it blew the bangs up off of the smooth skin of her forehead. No one noticed and she continued on through the tamped down grass through the path to the tent.

The man pulled aside the flap of a large tent of the sort with the two rooms. "This is where you're staying. We've hung an extra hammock for you. There is water in a creek not far from here it is good and clean and you can use it to clean with in the morning. The girls will show you."

"That won't be nece – " She began, but he interrupted her.

"You can put your things here, hang them." He explained, pointing to a long bamboo pole hanging. There were several of these around the walls of the tent with a few outfits hung on each. She also wondered what he meant by hammock until her eyes adjusted to the darkness inside the tent, affording her a proper view of the inside of one of the 'house' tents for the first time. The main room was for sleeping and the beds were arranged in two rows along each end of the main room, though they weren't true beds they were hammocks made of broad netting and lined with, admittedly, very comfortable looking sheets and blankets and a couple of pillows each. There were six hammocks in this room and she realized they likely normally slept five to a tent. There were closed off partitions to either end of the tent and when she pulled the flap back she realized that they were primitive dressing areas. The bamboo poles with clothes were hung here except for the outfit that each girl intended to be wearing soon enough to leave it in the main room. Many of the clothes were similar in design as what she had seen, but some of the outfits were also nice materials- silks and satins and bright colors. Her eyes widened at the splendor of color even here in the Vinkus. Along the back sat a small bench with what looked suspiciously like a red plant. "Ahh.. it is a plant. These grow naturally here and we find that they serve us well for water basins. This one is clean water for drinking." Elphaba nodded, deciding it might be better not to tell him she didn't drink water. That night at the feast they had had tea and some red liquid of which designs she did not know, but everyone had drank it and upon trying some she had found it delicious.

"And that?" She asked, nodding to a large black earthenware item that looked like a flowerpot except that it was not open at the top.

The man smirked at his own private joke which Elphaba did not figure out until she went to open the top and was overwhelmed with something that smelt acrid and somewhat like ammonia. Urine. She looked over at the man with a slightly incredulous look on her face, but quickly tried to cover it up.

"These are only for night use." He said with a cough, "And I trust you see why it is imperative to keep them covered up. In this kind of heat the smells would be overpowering if not for these covers."

Elphaba nodded, an obviously relieved smile passing over her. Of course it was only for night use, well that was much better. Of course during the day they had real toilets. Every civilized nation had indoor plumbing (even the Quadlings had that). "And for during the day I'm sure I'll find that across the tent?" She inquired, nodding to the other closed off partition.

The man smirked slightly wider and there was just as much an incredulous look on his face, "Pick a nice bush. Make sure there's no stickers in it I advise you or you be sittin' funny for a couple of days."

Elphaba looked at him with wide, horrified eyes. She wasn't sure if it was the knowledge that, she supposed she should have guessed for a constantly migrating society, there were no true toilets or even latrines, or the fact that the man was having a good joke at her expense because she had not known or more likely she had not realized it until it was put right into her face that there was no plumbing. She felt her face turning a nice deep emerald color as she realized just how foolish and spoiled she looked. Truthfully Elphaba knew that she was hardly spoiled, it was merely that she was surprised, for she hadn't known what to expect here and Peerless had left out the little detail that nature calls were to be answered IN nature. She just sighed inwardly and wondered if the surprises of the day were ever going to be finished.

After her disagreeable companion had left her to her own thoughts Elphaba moved to the other little partition to look inside it and found just a second room in the same style of the first that was probably meant for the same function that the first one had been meant for. She stepped inside and quickly began to undress, uncomfortable with herself even in the darkness of this little partitioned off area completely alone. Though Peerless had done a lot for Elphaba's self esteem she would forever be unsure of herself as far as her strange green-ness was concerned and the same for her physical appearance. She quickly finished undressing and got into her trunk to retrieve her white nightgown, shivering into it not so much of cold but of being uncomfortable. She wrapped her arms around herself to dispel her feelings of being naked even in her clothes as she moved across the tent and crawled into her hammock, surprised at the fact that it rocked slightly, but not how she would have expected sleeping in a hammock to do. It stayed fairly level rather than tipping over as she found her place and as she settled into the middle of the large netted thing and snuggled down, it didn't move at all. Arjiki hammocks were meant to be big enough and strong enough to support at least two people moving around in their sleep without tipping over and waking the person to the unwelcome surprise of winding up on the floor of their tent. She was gratified to know this for it didn't amuse her when she had found out she'd be spending her nights for an unstated amount of time sleeping in a hammock given that there was one at Colwen Grounds and every time she sat in it she fell out. This was much better and, dare she say it, even more comfortable than a real bed.

Elphaba was nearly asleep after her long and complicated day when she heard the tent flap open. The sound of the cicadas was loud and the frogs croaking somewhere off in the distance, the sounds of the Vinkus at night. The girls that were sharing this tent with her entered it, none too quietly either. All of them were giggling madly without bothering to smother the sounds of the laughter as they started to change for bed, stripping out of their clothing without even bothering to shield themselves from each other. This kind of practice left Elphaba feeling not only awake but fairly shocked and at first she tried not to look. It was awkward, especially because she had the feeling that these girls thought her asleep. Listening to someone giggle when you were meant to be asleep certainly didn't help things.

She watched them surreptitiously from beneath her blanket, their long, slender bodies shining in the light of the lantern placed in the middle of the tent floor to allow them enough light to get ready for bed by. Little did she know this nightly examination was something that they did quite often, looking each other over and making sure they were quite perfect for whenever the first of them got picked to be married. She only recognized one of them and it was the girl that had refused to speak t her at the blanket. Elphaba thought her name was Ebele if she remembered correctly. She certainly didn't look friendly and she had an expression that reminded Elphaba of someone who had just taken a big bite of a sour lemon. Eventually they started dressing for bed and the one named Ebele spoke. "SO .. what do you think of the green girl?" She asked her companion.

"Ebele.. she's IN here." The girl whispered, a kind of horror going through her quiet voice as she nodded over to the hammock that Elphaba was currently hiding in, pretending even more vigorously now to be fast asleep.

"So? She's asleep. What do you think?"

"Well… I don't know… she's awfully quiet if you ask me. I don't see how you can really know much about a person unless they actually talk. Then again maybe she's so stupid she doesn't know how to talk. Obviously she doesn't speak Arjiki or she'd have had more than two words to say tonight at the feast. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that that girl has more problems than she's letting on and I don't mean with her skin, though I'd say that's a new category unto itself." She smirked. "How do you even turn green? Do you suppose her mother did something while she was pregnant with her or something that caused her to go all green? Well I'm certainly glad my mother didn't do whatever it was for I personally really like my own color, especially if I had to choose between it or green I don't know how she thinks anyone's every going to take her seriously between the fact that she can't talk and the fact that she's green and she looks so awkward. Did you see how tall she is? She looks as tall as the young warriors before they sprout up an grow some muscle. She doesn't even have any curves at all. What kind of a boy is ever going to want to marry something like that? Look at her hips, I bet she'd never be able to have a baby because well, my Mama says women have a hard time if they're that narrow about the hips. She's seen women DIE when it's like that before." The girl smirked in a none to kind way. "Really I don't fancy her at all her or her Grandfather. What kind a name is Eminent Thropp. The whole thing is a joke anyway. The Wizard makes all the decisions for Oz and he does whatever he wants to. The whole idea of having someone who rules Munchkinland is completely ridiculous unless he makes it a state of its own. It's nothing like here. Here we answer to know one but our chieftain. The wizard will have no say over our people and we will make our own decisions and be the noble people that we are without being told what to do by some frop who took over in Oz." Ebele continued.

Elphaba could see her proud high forehead and unkind eyes from where she was still pretending to sleep and she shuddered. She was unused to such open and outspoken criticism against Oz. Of course there were people who disliked the rule in Oz, but few spoke in such a way within central Oz due to being afraid of being found out by the Wizard's grueling secret police, The Gale Force. No one wanted to incur the anger of the highest person in Oz and Elphaba was only now beginning to realize that these people were proud of their culture, their tradition and the fact that they had resisted becoming a part of the rest of Oz for so long. They somewhat looked down on other Ozians as being weak for not overflowing the forces of the Wizard as they had been able to keep him out of THEIR lands. Some of the people had little respect for the rest of Oz in the same way some of central Oz thought the Winkies were a barbaric people. So much misunderstanding and resentment, Elphaba thought to herself.

She tried to pretend that she wasn't hurt by the snide giggles and comments about her that continued from the other side of the tent for some time more, but in the dark, even though she was extremely ashamed by it, Elphaba felt a burning tear begin to trickle slowly down her green skin. It smarted the way all water did against the sensitive green of her cheek and her eyes water even more from the pain of crying. She swallowed and tried to block out the teasing words as the thoughts swirled away into her dreams.

~*~

When she awoke the next morning, Elphaba's vision of the world was a tiny bit mollified when the first thing that greeted her eyes was the most beautiful sunrise she thought she had ever seen in her entire life. She had never seen the sky look like that before. It looked as though an artist had taken the lightest colors on his palette and mixed them with white to make them even more pale and then painted the sky beautifully with them and used other brushes to blend them so well that it wasn't perfectly clear where the separations between the different colors were because they had been so carefully blended together. The sun was almost level with the horizon but had not yet shown itself from over the edge. Right along the tiny line of trees that could be seen seemingly miles away in the distance, there was a bright pink-red-orange hued glow that belied the true nature of what the sky would look like a bit later in the day. For now this was just a false picture of pastels, this day would be as hot as any other experienced on the Vinkan plains with no letup. However, above this red core which Elphaba knew belonged only to the coloring directly around the sun there was then a peach colored glow that could not be called either orange or pink, then a lighter color of pink that looked to be the exact color of a stick of cotton candy. From this the sky turned into the softest of lavenders and then purple violet and then the deepest of blue-purples. Up in the portion that was still purple there was still a smattering of pinpricks of the stars above them. Elphaba felt that, in a way, the world had renewed itself to her again somehow.

She looked about and realized that though it was sunrise it was likely really early in the day being the middle of the summer dawn always came early. The other hammocks in their tent were each still occupied by a sleeping girl and Elphaba took a fiendish delight in imagining the kinds of things she could do to them without them ever knowing, but she quickly put herself in check reminding herself that she didn't need to hurt the Munchkin's opinions of the Winkies or vice versa with stupid childish things such as that. Right would out- eventually. However, she did have to clench her hand to keep from doing something she would later regret as she slowly turned her legs around to touch her feet to the grass floor that was the inside of their tent. It felt surprisingly nice, that cool green grass tickling the bottoms of her feet as she sat there, the hammock hardly even having moved despite her change of position. She really did need to learn how to set up a hammock like this.

She sighed to herself and rubbed her forehead slightly and took access of herself as she stood up and moved to her trunk to try to find something to wear. She was already learning that the heat here was oppressive and she had only been here in the evening. She didn't want to know what it would be like to experience a heat in the middle of the day, though she would be before she knew it. She needed something loose that would breathe and, looking around her things spread out on the grass floor of the tent, she realized that she didn't really even have clothing like that. Most of Elphaba's clothes were meant to confine and to hide. She didn't wear as much black or plain dark colors as she had as a child, Peerless had changed this about her wanting her to look stylish and to be proud of herself, green skin or not, but none of his influence could change her overbearing amount of modesty because, the truth was, she was not really confident in herself she just pretended to be because it made him feel like he'd done something. Elphaba loved the old man deeply and nothing in her could bare to cause him even the slightest disappointment and so she would keep it a secret that she was still the same girl who had come to him (or at least to her mind she was.. he could see the changes in her which she could not see). She sighed a bit as she looked with chagrin at the long sleeved dresses with their long skirts and the tight fitted clothing and decided that very little of this would help her here. She wondered what Peerless would wear since, to her knowledge, he had no clothes that were any less modest than her own style of dress given that men typically dressed in long pants and shirts back in central Oz (though of varying degrees of oddity from what we Outerworldians might have considered normal for certain!)

She finally selected a knee length navy blue pleated skirt and a white long sleeved button up blouse. At least it was cotton and therefore more breathable than some of the other things she was in possession of, however, it wasn't a great deal of help compared with the loose clothing that she had seen the night before in that tent: clothes which flowed around the body to allow air in- long dresses with empire waists that did not conform to the figure, with no sleeves to constrict the arm or the movement of the person, pants of the loose flowing type that allowed air to the skin or made of loose, thin material and shirts that had been so designed to let air to the skin, shoes that were sandal like in design rather than the dress shoes that Elphaba wore that were black boots with a small half inch heel that had to be laced with a tiny hook because full sized fingers couldn't manipulate all of those buttons particularly well. She stroked her fingers over the leather of her shoes reluctantly- they weren't practical for this place – none of these things were. She looked like she was prepared for the Gillikin, not for a sojourn in the Vinkus compared to the indigenous people here. It was just another way she felt a bit foolish, but she tried to bear up and not allow it to get to her as she took her clothes resolutely into the other portion of the tent to dress in case any of the girls should wake. They already thought she was enough of a freak without them needing to see her without her clothes.

She finished dressing and looked at herself in the red plant water dish seeing herself reflected back at her, a young girl on the brink of womanhood, sixteen in a little over a month, with her whole future ahead of her and she let out a small sigh of her own. Suddenly, something else took preoccupation of her mind and her stomach clenched as she remembered that no time in the last evening had she found it within her to reface the acrid smelling black pot meant, as the man had so informed her, for night use. She wondered if she could get away with using it at the moment, but decided that she would not be able to do so because the sound of the cover grating might wake one of the other girls and she was in no mood to face them. So, muttering darkly, she headed off into the distance for the nearest group of trees she could locate. She had learned that though the plain was vast, groups of trees grew here in clusters perhaps a couple of square miles wide- there were few true forests, but these trees grew where the natural aquifers had a way to the surface. Hearing nothing but the swaying of the trees in the slight morning wind she looked around as she entered the comparative darkness of the grove of trees until she could no longer see the camp and carefully began to scrutinize her environs – it looked much like a deep forest here and had she not known the truth she might have believed it went on for miles when indeed this particular clump of trees was rather small. She sighed resolutely as she crouched behind a bush and lifted up her skirts, only her eyes able to be seen over the top of it.

Perhaps that could have been the end of this ridiculousness had the next event not occurred. She froze, unable to even stand up from her position when she heard a sinister sounding well.. rattle and a hiss. She slowly, very slowly, looked over her shoulder and saw what she knew well to be a rattlesnake working its way out of the bush she had chosen to go and sun itself. She had apparently woken it and interrupted it from its night sleep and she shuddered a bit, standing up and letting her skirt drop. "Wonderful." She whispered. "Just… don't .. come.. after ..me.. Good snake.. That's right.. I'm leaving." She muttered, backing away. Elphaba had a talent with animals it was true and had even managed to tame a wild Teumessian Fox which still followed her about the Colwen Grounds house back at home, but this was NOT an animal that she particularly cared to become more acquainted with.

"It helps if you hit the bushes with a branch before you um… well.. if anything's in there it comes out then." A voice said from behind her.

Elphaba swung around so fast she almost hyper-extended something and caught sight of the familiar face of Kayin. Her own face immediately turned a perfect shade of emerald as she wrapped her arms around her waist in that protective, highly embarrassed way that people have of doing when they've been caught at a vulnerable moment. She probably would have been a lot more upset except for the fact that, if it were possible, she thought herself actually in pain from needing to relieve herself so badly after not having done so for so many hours. Well this was an embarrassing predicament and it was obvious from the sparkle in his eyes he knew exactly what she had been up to and was doing his best not to laugh as he judged it would be rather unfair to laugh at her.

"Um.. Thanks.. I'll remember that." She muttered, her face only going greener.

He smiled, as if trying to make up and held out the huge staff like, gnarled branch he'd been holding onto. "Here you take mine."

Elphaba just gave him a characteristic Thropp look of indignation. She would have liked to have told him what he could do with his stick that did NOT involve her using it, but her own need was presently so great that she couldn't afford to waste time trying to find a stick of the same persuasion he'd given her and she'd take the embarrassment over the prospect of finding another snake or something even worse. So, she reluctantly put her hand out and took it. "Thank you." She said reluctantly and still indignantly. "Are you leaving now?"

Kayin just smirked slightly, "Yep." He said, turning and strowing away into the woods, whistling which only infuriated her more. She wanted to like Kayin – he was so open and friendly, but it was times like this when he got under her skin, admittedly she knew it was her own stupidity and foolishness that caused most of it but that didn't make it better!

She just sighed to herself and walked to a different bush and brought the stick down on it probably a bit harder than strictly needed to be done, but she was going to make absolutely certain that there were no snakes in this particular bush…..

After Elphaba left the woods, mercifully snake free, she found herself free of constraints or a schedule, at least to her knowledge, for the day, for the first time in quite a while. She smiled slightly at this, but the realized that she wasn't sure what she would spend the day doing. What did the Arjiki people do all day long? They obviously had to spent the day doing something in order to promote their survival as a race but she wasn't sure what that might be, she realized. She had asked her grandfather all the wrong questions she was beginning to realize only now! She sighed a bit as she decided just simply to go for a walk and enjoy the wonder that was this beautiful land. The sunrise was becoming a bit darker now as the sun crept ever eastward towards the Horizon's rim and the moment of sunrise was going to be at hand within a minute or two. She continued to walk purposefully forward with a small smile spreading across her face as she soaked up the beauty of this place.

So intent was she on her walking that she almost didn't realize that she was walking up towards someone else until she was practically upon him. It couldn't be helped, for he was sitting within the tall grass and it was tall enough in this particular area that she would have missed him entirely had he not chosen to move. Elphaba though she knew something about blending in but in a single moment he showed her she was a novice compared this virtuoso. She shivered as she caught sight of him through the grass as she realized all at once that she was not as alone as she had believed but also who it was. Fiyero Tigelaar. She shivered slightly as a feeling she wasn't quite able to interpret yet passed over her. She didn't understand it… but it was now as if there was a gap between them, a chasm as deep as a canyon. At the age of eleven they had run the fields of Colwen grounds together as thoughtless youngsters, playing and fighting, staining their hands and tongues with the juice of the blackberries that grew in the thickets and fishing in the little ponds with needle and string. They were days laying on the green glasses and looking at the design of the clouds in the blue sky and running through the halls of Colwen Grounds shouting and interrupting the diplomatic proceedings by sliding down the halls in stocking feet and crashing into things, building a ramp of scrap metal and sliding down it on an old mattress by turns, exploring the manor house's haunted cellar and attic where all the things were stored from families of old with a candle that always went out and Fiyero telling her there were 'spirits here' which he could feel- or professed to feel – Elphaba at the time had thought it was neat, but now she wasn't sure she even believed in the Unnamed God.. let alone these "Spirits" Fiyero professed existed. She wondered, now, why these memories were suddenly so strong in her. They were far from the carefree children they had been… they were different now, expected to act like adults now and be responsible.

"Good morning." He said, without ever turning to look at her.

"How did you know? I was here?" She breathed, for she had thought she'd been silent.

"I heard you."

"But I couldn't even hear me. There wasn't any noise." She pointed out.

He smirked at what seemed to be his own private joke. "You were plenty loud enough I assure you. I could hear every single step you took." He said, for the first time turning enough that she could see his serious dark eyes.

"I don't understand. I honestly wasn't making noise."

"Not to you I expect, but to be quiet to an Arjiki warrior is so completely different than to be quiet to anyone else. You see, quiet to us means whether we will be able to eat or not. Our food source depends upon our ability to be able to silently sneak up on prey and catch them when their hearing abilities might be far beyond that of normal person experience." He explained, his dark eyes following her every movement in that curious, carefully observant way that she had already noticed about the Arjikis who followed every movement you made with dark, solemn, curious eyes. "So to you yes I expect you were being perfectly quiet and, as far as that goes, for a Munchkinlander you were being exceptionally quiet, but as far as overall goes.. I could hear you." He pointed out, his face still a strange mask of seriousness.

"Oh… " She murmured.

"It's quite early to be up and about, I rarely ever meet anyone up at this time of morning." He commented. "What are you doing up?"

She looked over at him in surprise and just shrugged slightly, "I woke up and I wasn't tired so I got up." she wanted to add _and do I need a reason for that? _Back a bit sharply, but she decided not to say it, and, had she been watching she would have noticed a tiny hint of disappointment in the brown eyes of the other as he wondered if she had really become so distinguished and royal like all of the other Ozians. Had Elphaba Thropp conformed? Fiyero knew inwardly that he would be sad if his childhood friend had turned into a person just like all of the other nameless ones who never receive more than a cursory glance because they are like every other specimen of their breed.

She sighed to herself as she looked at him, not knowing his thoughts and wondering if he too had become a royal, a man, not interested in the childish games they used to play. She wished she could read his mind to understand if he had changed or, like she, (or at least she felt this way), that it was a front she put up for the benefit of others that she met and not a true change.

"Oh I see." He said quietly. He turned quietly and looked at the sunrise as the edge of the disc of the sun finally crept over the horizon in a flaming sheath of gold surrounded by deeper oranges at the very outer ring. Fiyero saw these sunrises and sunsets two times a day for every day of the year that the Arjiki tribe was nomadic, but still they managed to strike the young man with a kind of wonder that he could never fully express to anyone else.

Upon finding out that Elphaba, who had been a dear friend and who, had the mail not been so spotty, he might have kept contact with, was coming for a visit with her Grandfather as he had done with his parents going to Munchkinland to Peerless' home years before, he had been thrilled. However, her arrival had not been at all what he expected. This was a different Elphaba than the one he had known when he was a child for now she had a kind of distinguished aura that surrounded her as if she had turned into a real Thropp Descending instead of being just 'Elphie'. It never crossed his mind that his old friend was currently having similar thoughts about him. Had Fiyero turned into a true Arjiki warrior who had no time or place for her or anyone else because he was so busy preparing to assume a true throne. Elphaba was conscientious that though her duty was important, it did not have the same finality as Fiyero's. Without him the entire Arjiki tribe would have soon died out or been scattered to the winds – or at least, perhaps not yet him but his mother and his father's memory- someday him. Had he turned into the kind of ruler that the tribe needed but that had lost her, her friend?

"The sunrise is really pretty." Elphaba murmured softly, staring at it and lifting her hand to cover over her eyes so that it didn't shine into her eyes in such a blinding way.

Fiyero nodded quietly, "Yes, the prettiest sunrises and sunsets are here at seemingly the very edge of the world. Of course I doubt it actually is the edge of the world, but it seems so." He said with a thoughtful expression. "The sunsets here make me feel as if…"

"… you could feel them inside of yourself." She finished instantly, looking over at him as their eyes connected, both shocked. It was the same thing that he had told her as a child when they were looking at sunsets on the grassy slope of Colwen Grounds, "You wanted me to see a Vinkus sunrise before I ever said that the ones in Munchkinland were truly beautiful." She recalled with a thoughtful half smile, allowing her gaze to travel across to him and he leaped off the ground to match her height with only the slightest of effort.

"You've not changed!"

"Neither have you! I thought you had become one of those stuck up princes from books!" Elphaba exclaimed in disbelief as her lips curved up into a happy smile that even showed off the hint of her teeth, a rarity in and of itself.

"And I thought YOU had become invested in Central Ozian politics and that you no longer cared about anything else, that you were here strictly to do your diplomatic duty with your grandfather!" He protested shaking his head. Suddenly they both found that they were moving towards each other at a rapid rate and he hit him in the chest hard, surprised with the force of her arms going around his shoulders as she gave him a tight squeeze and he returned it, wrapping his arms around her slim waist and giving her an affectionate, friendly embrace for a few minutes. He shivered slightly but with a happy grin when she gave him a slight squeeze in return, though a bit awkwardly. He remembered that Elphaba had always been very reserved in displays of affection. In the Vinkus where it was permissible to kiss your sweetheart on the mouth in public, such a thing would have been frowned upon in Central Oz and thought to have been rather inappropriate. This was a concept he had not been able to understand and still could not. What was wrong with showing that you loved someone? Maybe if there was more love in their world the people wouldn't be so uptight and impossible half of the time. However, there was no point in him saying this and so he had always kept this opinion to himself, other than expressing it to his father who had tried to use it as a lesson to illustrate the difference between people. No matter, she was hugging him, if a bit awkwardly – for that rule applied to other walks of physical affection as well, such as hugging and hand holding. Even in friendship relationships only close friends expressed any kind of physical bond even if that bond was not romantic.

She gave him one extra squeeze before she pulled back, her cheeks turning a deep emerald color. "Sorry." She murmured quietly, looking away, trying to focus on anything but him. "I probably shouldn't've… done that."

He just grinned even wider and she looked up in surprise, realizing just what a nice smile he had- a smile that had not changed. In him she could see the little boy who had been her playmate and she wondered how she could have ever believed that he could have changed and been fooled by the façade of a ruler that he had put in place for everyone else. It was the very same thing she was doing was it not? How could she have even questioned his motives behind his behavior as startling as it was? She offered her biggest smile back at him which, albeit, was not quite as large as his, but was no less radiant for certain.

"Come and sit, there's so many things I have to tell you."

"And you!" Elphaba said with another smile, pleased and a bit surprised at how open she felt with him. He truly was a good friend just as she had known. She moved across the grass to where he was sitting and settled down into it as she kept her eyes focused horizonward, not wanting to miss a single moment of the beautiful sunrise that seemed to be painting itself across the sky up above the as it was now beginning to turn more golden yellow and then she knew it would soon be the blue of day filled with the cotton puffs of clouds. "There's so much you haven't known about for five years and I expect there's a lot I've missed out on as well. I tried to write to you a few times but you never wrote back."

He looked up at her wounded. "Of course I wrote back? Do you mean to tell me that you never got them?! When I could have been out hunting antelope or lion instead of writing letters and you didn't even ever read them?!" There was the kind of wounded indignation in his voice that sounded like he was that little boy all over again and she was tempted to smirk at his half real half imagined pout.

"Well I expect it's because the postal system is rather shoddy in some parts, especially Kumbricia's pass- no one wants to travel through there even if it is the Quickest way and doesn't require one to go through the Kells which is longer and more dangerous for traveling, Kumbricia's pass has such a bad reputation with the Central Ozians that no one will go through it and without that the mail only gets through perhaps once every six or eight weeks from anything west of the Gillikin so it doesn't surprise me that the letters got lost somewhere." Elphie said with a small sigh.

Fiyero just sighed as well, but could never be cross for long. "Well then, we'll just have to make up for it now."

"Oh.. you mean you don't want to go hunt antelope or lions now?" She inquired, trying to keep her voice serious but not particularly succeeding. She was not sure that she entirely understood why it was so easy to be herself with him, but she slipped back into it like a comfortable old outfit that she had worn so many times it conformed to her shape. She knew how to be just Elphaba with Fiyero and that was fine with her. She would rather trade all the parties and riches and fame in the world just to be Elphaba Thropp, here with her best friend in all the world under the beautiful beginnings of a new day at the end of the world.

"Of course not. I'd rather be with my best friend." He responded the exact words that she had thought earlier as though he had plucked them right out of her mind and left her without needing to say anything because he had said it exactly the way she would have chosen to phrase it had she needed to do so.

"Good. I'm glad to know that I'm still more interesting than a lion."

"I'm not sure I would go that far. Lions are fascinating creatures."

She looked at him in horror for a moment until she saw the hint of a smirk playing at the corners of his mouth and making the skin there twitch just slightly- enough for her to know that he was fighting a smile. "Liar!" She exclaimed with a laugh. "Say it! Say the truth Fiyero."

"The truth is you are much more interesting than any lion or lioness I ever had the pleasure of meeting and I would much rather spend my morning finding out all of your adventures and the stories of your life for the past five years than chasing something about here on this wondrous plain of grass we have around us." He said, then smirked again, "Well.. how did I do? Was it to your satisfaction 'Miss' Elphaba?"

Elphie grinned even more widely though she tried to keep herself from doing it. "Well.. I daresay that there were a few improvements you could have made to it such as being sure that you would point out how much more able I am to continue to amuse you after a continued period of time and … well.. I'm sure I could think of something if you really wanted to know, Yero. Or have you grown out of that name?"

"Oh.. no.." He looked up at her with a slight shading to his cheeks. "My mother still calls me Yero so I suppose you will do the same no?"

"I suppose I will." She reiterated, looking up at him with glowing eyes, grateful of the friendship that had been rekindled between them in such a short time.

"Good. I wouldn't want it any other way."

"Nor would I? And you will persist on calling me Fae and Elphie and every other thing besides Elphaba?"

"I suppose I will." He responded, which caused her to want to burst into laughter and it was only through the most stringent of self discipline that she was able to keep from doing so.

"I'm glad you're not changed Yero, for never would I be able to have a friend such as you." She looked over at him with an almost curious expression in her keen eyes, a mixture of the comfortable love of a good friendship renewed, a true happiness, a different kinship than she had ever experienced with someone washing over her in relief just to have her good friend back with her again. She could not say just exactly how much that meant to her, but the warming of her young heart was probably a good as description as any as to how it was that just the knowledge he had not changed affected her.

"I'm glad too, well.. you I mean." He said, looking over at her with a small smile of his own as they sat there, shoulder to shoulder looking into the brilliancy of a new day dawning and, Elphaba thought to herself, it was a bit metaphorical of them at the moment with so many new chapters of a beautiful story to explore together now reunited and as good friends as ever they had been. She now knew that all of the mistakes of the previous night didn't truly matter. She swallowed a bit in surprise as she felt his warm fingers brush hers and she quickly looked down to see his fingers touch against the edge of hers. She did not meet his eyes for it would make the gesture stand for something else entirely. However, he was soon gratified to feel that, after her moment of shock, her slender green fingers slipping in between his making a beautiful contrast. His skin was soft and warm next to her own.

Fiyero gave her hand the slightest of squeezes, suddenly thankful as she for their reunion and their friendship- it was a treasure beyond any that riches could bring for no amount of money could bring one satisfaction in life. Happiness for happiness sake was the only alternative then…

* * *

_Right well.. this chapter ran away from me a little bit but I simply couldn't see making a chapter to its own just for Elphie going to bed as entertaining as it was I'm sure you all wanted more meat than that. Sooo what do you think of Elphie's first day in the Vinkus? Ebele? lol I honestly felt bad for her in her "stick" incident, probably because I have had the lovely experience of having to get one with nature in THAT sense and it was probably the worst experience of my entire life except we didn't find a snake we found poison ivy. Even I'm not cruel enough to do that to Elphie lol. However, I think her klutziness here is good because it shows that she is a regular teenager in beneath the royal "bearing" Peerless is trying to teach her to have. You'd never see HIM having these problems lol I think it's just life experience but I think she'll get better as time goes on. _

_Also we'll soon be getting into the actual meat of the plot now (and I say this almost 20k in.. Oi.. once again I have created a plotline much too long for a single month's novel.. I do this every year.. have done it all four years.. oh well.. any bets as to how long this will wind up being? Oh wait you don't know the whole plot. Oh well.. time for me to stop rambling now. _

_Oh PS- I respond to every review that I get, which I thought EVERYONE did .. come to find out I guess a lot of people don't actually respond to reviews on their fic which I consider shocking and rude so anyway.. if you review I'll have something to say back. :) Also sweet talking might get you hints on future happenings via response to review. Oh I accept bribes on MSN too in all monetary denominations - KIDDING. _

_OHH PPS - I forgot if I've mentioned this but all the music is from one of the Lion King Soundtracks. (Disney, Sequel, Stage shows.. used them all) - Kay I'm reallllyyy going now. _


	4. Sensations of Consternation

~*~

Some say eat or be eaten

Some say live and let live

But all are agreed as they join the stampede

You should never take more than you give

~*~

The sun was wonderfully warm as it spilled down onto the grass from the azure blue sky up above them. The clouds were brilliant white against the deep blue of the sky and looked like scads of cotton of the freshest picked white variety. It was warm in the grass where she was laying and she was shaded by the nodding golden tops of the grass that reached past her knees when she was standing. It was so tall that now, easily, it towered over her head since she was laying down and thus she was learning, just as the Arjiki children did, to lay down in the grass and allow it to shade her given that there were few trees. In this particular place they were near enough to the Pass and the Great Kells that there were forests to their east within easy reaching distance, but everyone in the tribe was so used to living without the coverage of a 'real' forest and dealing with only the few square miles of trees they sometimes come upon growing near natural water sources, that they never bothered to go searching for a true forest even when they were camped within distance of one. Privately, Elphaba wondered to herself whether they would be moving while she and Peerless were there. Their lives were entirely intent upon following their prey wherever it went an so what if it should come time to pick up camp and move she wondered if she and Peerless would be going along, for he had never told her how long their visit would be and when she had asked he had said something to the effect of that it was unwise to plan these things out too thoroughly because things always came up when you least expected them to and it was better just to go into something with an open mind rather than knowing what you'd be doing every day- especially, he had said, when you were on a diplomatic visit.

She shifted positions a little bit to sink down further into the grass. Had one not known she was there it would have been rather hard to find her given the color of her skin was almost a natural camouflage. She was laying now in her skirt and blouse- which was stifling hot as always. She had been shocked the first morning at breakfast to find her Grandfather walking around wearing tribal pants and a shirt obviously sewn for a man of honor, but, as no one had offered her any tribal clothes, she continued to wear her own, unaware that they generally wanted you to ask to be begifted with their clothes as they saw giving them to you a sign of forcing their culture onto others who didn't want it. Sometimes the Arjikis would present a woman or man with clothes without being asked, but they usually had to get to know the a bit rather than to risk offending them by giving them a gift they did not want.

Her position was one that was fairly natural if one is laying in the grass with an arm tucked behind her head and folded so that her face was resting on her bent elbow and her fingers were clenched loosely around the collar of her shirt in the back. Her other hand was outstretched through the grass a few inches. Just enough to feel the warmth of Fiyero's fingers against hers, just verily touching at the tips and creating a nice contrast of rich brown and green mingling almost. They were laying only perhaps a foot apart, but could not really see each other through the denseness of the golden grass.

That was until Fiyero reached over with his free hand and tamped down the grass between their faces, proving that they were only just a foot or so apart, each laying, looking at each other as their eyes connected. Neither of them felt the need to speak at the moment and Fiyero, in fact, felt grateful that Elphaba was not like the girls who chattered incessantly. It wasn't that he didn't like girls who talked, but sometimes there were moments when it was meant to just be quiet and it should not be awkward to be so. One didn't need to be conversing endlessly in his personal opinion. It was alright to just be quiet and at one with nature. He shivered a bit when he looked down and saw the proximity of their fingers, for it wasn't something he had done and he did not think that she realized how close her fingers were to his or she probably would have pulled away. Well, he certainly wasn't going to tell her, for this advent sent his stomach into butterflies and his heart pounding. It was perhaps one of the most wonderful sensations that the young man had ever had as he looked over at Elphaba, laying there. Her eyes were intense in his until she closed them quietly and went back to her former imaginings and dreamings sleepy from the sun that poured down on them from up above.

He studied her features without moving and in a sneaky way so as to keep her from noticing he was staring. His eyes traced along her hand first. Her fingers were long and very slender. She wore no jewelry on them. Her skin, he had noted, was all of the exact same lovely shade of green. To him it mattered little that she was green and, in fact, he thought that it gave her face a kind of soft ethereal glow to which he had only before been able to attribute to the beauty of a growing thing. It attracted him because it reminded him of the earth. Her wrist was slender and then her sleeve cut off his view. He did not know how she could stand dressing in such a manner here always always with her long sleeved shirts buttoned all the way up to the throat, knee length stockings that went up past the bottom of her skirt to keep all of her legs hidden and those infernal little boots with those tiny buttons. At her throat there was a tiny gap where he could see the hollow at the base of her throat, shaded in dusky violet and greenish hues. There was the line of her jaw and her long, slender neck currently exposed due to her head being laid back. Fiyero continued his exploration of her striking facial features and moved backwards towards where her face was now turned towards him since he'd pushed down the grass in between them so they could see each other. His eyes traced over the curve of her cheek and her dark brown, nearly black but not quite, hair spilling in thick, straight waves over her shoulder. He could see a hint of her ear in beneath that long swath of hair. He was surprised, looking at her up close, to note that she had a tiny piercing hole in the lobe of her ear. He was most certain she had not had it when they were eleven and he wondered when she had gotten it. He recalled, vaguely, seeing her recently with a tiny pair of pearl earrings but today there was nothing. It just mounted his curiosity as to all of the secrets about her to a greater degree. He avowed that he would somehow know everything about her, someday.

Elphaba tipped her face up a bit towards the warmth of the sun and quietly, so quietly, she began to sing. ""It's the Circle of Life And it moves us all Through despair and hope Through faith and love Till we find our place On the path unwinding In the Circle The Circle of Life..." She stopped at the end of the lyric, her voice fading quietly off into nothingness and Fiyero watched her with new, surprised, respect. Few people could have sung in such oppressive heat as this, let alone lying flat on their back in it. And she did not just sing but her voice hit each note with such a ringing clarity, each word beautifully enunciated and spun in just the right way to strike the ear with favor. Her notes were perfectly clear and she hit them more precisely than a tuning fork could have done. Her voice was beautiful and it struck a chord within him he simply could not describe.

"Elphie?" He murmured softly.

She looked over at him and he could see that her face had gone that familiar green in the cheeks that said she was blushing. Whyever was she blushing? "What is it?"

She just shook her head, "I don't normally sing around other people." She admitted softly, having surprised even herself. She didn't know where the small burst of song had somehow come from within herself or if she should be expecting more. Elphaba loved to sing and it was one thing she was actually gifted at as far as talents went. She had a beautiful voice, also powerful. It was not a horribly high voice it was, instead, what she had thought she heard called a mezzo soprano, but even so she knew how to use her range to add to her abilities and knew exactly what to do with it to move people should she want to do so, though for the moment she had been singing simply for herself and, she supposed, Fiyero since he was there, but she hadn't been thinking of it that way and when he questioned her she felt her cheeks begin to turn a nice emerald color.

"Well, you can sing around me any time. That was lovely." He said with an appreciative and honest smile. And he meant it.

She blushed more, "Well.. maybe." She said, her usual shy amount of self confidence taking its usual toll on her. However, he seemed to honestly like it so perhaps she wouldn't be quite so insistent on not singing around other people if it was him she was going to sing for, or around. She looked over at him again for a brief moment. "I've been singing since I was young I just… well my father, Frex, used to want me to sing to the people he was attempting to convert and I suppose it rubbed me the wrong way to be used like that. He used me as an example of the Unnamed God's ability to write a cruel situation with a gift." She scoffed slightly. "as if a mere ability to sing in such a way would make up for being born as I was." She just shook her head, "I have believed for most of my life that he had his priorities rather messed up honestly."

Fiyero nodded, "It sounds so. However, you shouldn't look at your voice as merely a gift to make up for something but as a gift just for the sake of having a gift. It would not hurt you so much if you thought about it as just something that was done for you with no strings attached, so to speak." He pointed out thoughtfully.

She looked over in surprise, "You speak with intelligence I wish I had." She murmured with a slightly envious look.

Fiyero chuckled slightly, "Well maybe I do, but I could never sing the way you do. I suppose I can sing just alright, nothing like you do."

"We'll just have to be envious of each other then." She pointed out.

He nodded, slowly moving to sit up. "It's getting late, we should probably find our way back to camp. I want you to come with me and meet my mother. I want to introduce you properly." He said, another strange feeling passing over him for a few seconds. He was not sure what exactly had caused it, but he just knew in the past couple of days since her arrival he had noticed it more and more frequently when she was around and a bit of him suspected what it was even though he couldn't put this feeling into words yet. He had a good idea that he knew what had caused this sensation he got around her and he was afraid to admit to it yet should it go away. However, no matter what, he wanted her to meet his mother and a few other prominent members of the tribal council properly. He had been waiting for the last two days for an opportune moment to meet with her and introduce Elphaba. Or reintroduce her. It was technically an introduction. They had met at Colwen Grounds, briefly, but the two children couldn't be bothered with paying attention to all of the minor details that the adults were so concerned with and they had avoided everyone over the age of about 17 or so with quite astonishing ease during the time the talks were going on in the main house. This would be a true introduction and he wanted it to be through him rather than someone else, however, finding a time where more than one of them were in one place and not discussing business for hours on end could be difficult and he wanted to soak up every last bit of this wonderful last month or two of summer before they would return to Kiamo Ko and he would be cooped up for the winter. It rarely got cold in the Vinkus, but when the rainy season was upon them the entire savannah turned to a mucky nasty thing and all east of them in the Great Kells it snowed relentlessly cutting them off from any news from the east including wagon trains entirely and it was impossible to go out of door without losing yourself knee deep in mud and getting bogged down in completely innocent looking places.

"But.. I've already met your mother silly." Elphaba pointed out, slowly bringing herself to sit up as well, though regretfully as she had been laying there for quite some time and it had been wonderfully comfortable.

"Well, not since you were eleven really properly and, anyway, I just want to do it."

Elphaba smirked, "Fine." She acquiesced. "Though I still think the whole idea of introducing me to someone who has already met me and obviously know me is a little bit silly."

Nevertheless, the two walked together through the grass to the main tent. Elphaba had learned after the first night that this tent was so large because it was the diplomatic tent, the headquarters of everything. Many of the council without families of their own or whose families were gone or those who served to guard Baxiana slept here as well and all of the records and things that needed to be brought with them came with this tent, so, being the very center of the tribe, it was not simply one Queen's home but almost like Colwen Grounds in that people could go there to seek an audience with the ruler and that it served multiple functions beyond being a place to live. Fiyero, however, knew his way through it easily and he led her into a long, low room. His mother was signing a document with a pen dipped in ink at the far end of the room in the vine thrown she had been sitting upon a couple of evenings before at the feast. Elphaba noticed, from up close, she looked a bit wearier than she had at the feast and she wondered if the effort of keeping up her own nation away from the powers of Central Oz and the Wizard caused that tired looked about her eyes. She also took in the fact that Baxiana was not alone but this time had a companion sitting at the table not far from her with another stack and the two were talking.

Fiyero coughed slightly to get both of their attentions. When the man turned Elphaba noted that he was tall as well and strongly built and that he had not shaved his head but let his hair grow to his shoulders. His skin was lighter than most and, the most noticeable, a gash like scar running down one cheek that looked like his face had been attached with a butcher knife due to its length and how severe it looked being raised and slightly darker than his other facial features. He had dark eyes that traveled over her and he blinked.. too often.. The moment she laid eyes on this man Elphaba was overcome with a strange sensation of worry which she couldn't explain. All she knew was that he made her uneasy and she cast her eyes downwards, trying not to stare at the gruesome scar that covered the whole side of his face.

"That's my Uncle Sefu." Fiyero whispered quietly to her. "But everyone calls him Scar. I don't expect I need to tell you why that is." He muttered with a slightly amused grin. She just shook her head slightly in return as she felt the man catch her eyes and hold them, refusing to break the contact so that she could look down or away or anywhere but at him, not wanting to do so while he was still staring at her. Something about this simply didn't feel right, but she didn't have the time to question it now.

"Mother, Uncle." Fiyero said, addressing the both of them as he stepped forward. Elphaba hung back behind him and he was surprised that she knew of this custom of not stepping forward until one was properly introduced to the other person. He shot her a quiet look of surprised thanks.

"Ah my boy.." His uncle said in a voice that was somewhat oily, the way he always spoke which made Fiyero's senses all stand on the wrong end. However, there was very little that he could say about this, so he merely kept quiet about it. He had often felt like Scar was trying to replace his brother, Fiyero's father, by sliding into his place in the tribe. He didn't appreciate this insinuation of the man trying to take his father's place in he and his mother's life and he hoped that she saw through him as well. Little did he know, the man had much more on his mind than Baxiana or getting into her private affairs, for that was certainly not exactly what he had in mind.

"I want you to meet someone properly now that we've a little more time as you were all otherwise occupied at the feast and I didn't want to interrupt." He said, reaching back and motioning for Elphaba to step closer, to which she complied, her brown eyes moving between the two people in front of her but really, comparatively, saying very little indeed, just observing everything that happened here. "Mother, I know you have met her but it has been so long it must be a reintroduction. This is my friend Elphaba Thropp the Thropp Third Descending." He said rather calmly. Elphaba felt a small hint of pleasure and of worry when he managed her title so easily and confidently. It was said with a confidence and ease that she herself far from posessed and it made her wonder that he sounded so very at ease with it. She wondered if he accepted his lot in life to rule the Arjiki tribe one day as something taken for granted as much as one takes getting dressed each morning- something he was used to, ready for, excited about and the idea sent another shiver down her, for she had far from accepted her own mission in life as of yet.

She stepped forward, pushing these thoughts aside in order to give a small curtsy, but Baxiana immediately rose her up. She noticed when Fiyero introduced her he had spoken in an Ozian dialect, but he did not now as he spoke to her and Scar and Elphaba felt herself wondering once again what was being said. Though she was picking up on more of their confusing tongue each day that she was here that didn't meant that she understood it all yet, far from, and she wanted even more so to understand. It seemed that Baxiana was not entirely fluent in Ozian dialect, for she responded back much more freely in the Arjiki tongue. Elphaba was beginning to gather from seeing everyone speak to her, aside of quick or easy to understand thing, in Arjiki that perhaps she was not very fluent with the Ozian and felt somewhat ashamed that she did not know it well enough to speak it with her if it would have put her more at ease.

"It is a pleasure to see you again, Elphaba dear." The woman said, though her thick accent made the words almost unmanageable she did do it and Elphaba was touched by the effort. Like any other Arjiki the woman was an excellent hostess and knew the rules that lay therein about welcoming anyone from any walk of life into one's own community as though you would welcome a long lost relative you had not seen for years.

"And you." Elphaba said, curtsying again, her brown eyes taking on a new warmth as the woman put her at ease. The man, however, the man gave her strange shivers all over that, as a rule of thumb, were not a good feeling by any means. She just didn't understand how someone she had only met could exude such a sense of unrest on her and her eyes kept flicking across the large tent to him still trying to figure it all out but, thus far, having little success doing so. She would have to think on it for a while, she decided. She needed time to process everything that had happened in the last couple of days including this introduction.

The woman said something to Fiyero which, again, Elphaba found said too quickly for her to understand, but whatever she had said, Fiyero agree with her for he nodded and murmured. "Jya." The Arjiki word for 'Yes'.

"In which case, it is such a pleasure to meet you Miss Thropp." Scar said as he extended his hand to shake with her in a very easternized way not generally practiced here in the Vinkus. She was surprised to find that his voice was not as heavily accented and every word was said perfectly in Ozian. He was obviously quite familiar with the dialect and she filed this piece of information away for further research as she shook his hand, finding this touch, despite its brevity, rather awkward, and, almost immediately letting go of his hand after she had shaken it. His eyes, she noted, were as cold as black eyes, for they truly were black, unlike Fiyero's rich deep brown ones. They were glittering and filled with absolutely no emotion that she could find similar to warmth or friendliness. His debonair attitude and swift words had no means by which to reach his eyes making her shiver. That was certainly what had left her ill at ease and, likely, she would not have been impressed had she known that the man, who was staring at her with a cold, calculating glance, was shrewdly thinking his own less than kind thoughts about her.

Fiyero spoke for a few moments with his mother before he bade her goodbye and turned to Elphaba. "Come, I have a message for your grandfather. Why don't you tag along with me?" He suggested.

Elphaba shook her head, "I do not think so. I'm suddenly feeling sleepy. I think I will lay down and take a nap before we reconvene for dinner." She said.

Fiyero looked at her a bit strangely, for she had never before admitted that she was tired in the last two days and the previous afternoon they had been on quite a hike and it had not tired her out, moreover, they had been laying around in the grass all afternoon doing little _but _resting. However, it was not his prerogative to comment and so he merely nodded hoping that he had not done anything to offend or upset her as he watched her walk away through the tamped down grass in the middle of the camp to the tent she was sharing with a few of the other girls.

Elphaba, for her part, lay herself down in her hammock reveling in the feel of just being alone in the tent for the first time in about two days. The other girls seemed to follow her, though she could guess it was not she they were following but, more accurately, Fiyero and it was just that she always seemed to be with him and then the fact that she and the girls were sharing a tent, or well, some of them, did not seem to help matters for the amount of times she saw them during the day. However, for now she was alone and it would give her an opportunity to mull over her thoughts. They were certainly varied and reaching to many different extremes. The last two days and her uncomfortable meeting with Fiyero's Uncle had given her quite a few new things to worry about though she wasn't exactly sure why it should be so worrisome to her, just that it was. All of these things bore need for careful consideration and she felt glad that it was still a little while until dinner. Elphaba also knew that, no matter what happened, she could not tell anyone- even Fiyero, about her observations of his uncle. Making herself an enemy to an important man of the tribe, the Prince's Uncle no less, would be less than prudent. Even she was diplomat enough to know this. No, she had no further recourse but just to watch things as they played out and try to figure them out on her own.

* * *

_So yes this chapter was shorter and more manageable I think.. I hope. What do you guys think of Scar? Hehhehe What about Baxiana for that matter? More to come soon as the plot here in the Vinkus just seems to be thickening. _


	5. Just Two Friends Right?

_~*~_

_Hakuna Matata! _

_What a wonderful phrase _

_Hakuna Matata! _

_Ain't no passing craze _

_It means no worries _

_For the rest of your days _

_It's our problem-free philosophy _

_Hakuna Matata! _

_~*~_

Elphaba looked out across the waving grass from where she was sitting close beside her friend. Through the past days they had had every kind of adventure one could imagine always spending the entire day together and each feeling very much as though they had had a good time at the end of the day. Elphaba figured she should have been spending as much time diligently attempting to improve her tent-mates' moods towards her which had only gotten increasingly worse through the last days, but she would much rather spend her time capering about after Fiyero on the plains and doing the kinds of things he enjoyed doing. He had taught her much about the Vinkus in the past days- how to put together one of their tents with the huge white cloth coverings, how to set up a hammock- though hers were not done nearly so well as his and always seemed to keep swinging even when she thought she had gotten the center of balance perfectly in the weights of the rope that went into making it. Then Fiyero would take one look at her imperfectly built hammock and know exactly what she'd done wrong and how to fix it, which always irritated her and she avowed someday she would build a hammock with which he could find nothing wrong. He assured her that correcting someone's skills was not a means to offend but to greaten their talent and thus it was, in reality, a compliment, though this hardly made her feel better. He also told her that learning to make and hang hammocks was a unique art and few had perfected the ability (this did make her feel better).

"What are they doing?" She asked, shifting positions in order to see further into the trees where a group of Arjiki boys were gathered around something.

Fiyero smirked slightly, "Getting ready to go hunting looks like." He responded, looking over at her.

"I want to go along." She muttered, half serious half joking.

Fiyero looked over at her in surprise, such a thing, though heard of among their people, was a rarity indeed. Most of the women preferred to stay back and take care of the cooking and the other household duties. He considered this for a moment. "Well, if I took you ought there now you'd alert every antelope within a five mile radius of your presence with your steps." He said, smirking slightly as he teased her.

"They are _not _that loud, 'Yero."

"Oh yes they are, Fae." He teased, grinning. "If you learn to walk like an Arjiki when they hunt – we call it stalking, and you learn all of the other rules too, then I'll take you hunting." He agreed.

"Is that a challenge?"

He grinned wider, "I believe it is."

"Then tell me the rules."

He looked over at her and just shook his head slightly and laid back in the grass. "You never fail to surprise me." He admitted, looking over at her. "Alright, I'll tell you but I don't expect that you'll be able to do it. First off, since the grass is long and tall it can't move when you go through it because when the pieces rub against each other it makes too much noise. So, when you walk you have to go heel toe, heel toe, rather than toe heel like you're probably used to walking. You need to put your heel forward first which tamps down the grass silently and gives you a place to walk without ever making a sound. Also, the movement of the grass can scare off small animals that will run and then alert larger animals by their movement and before long all the prey knows where to hide and where to go and where to stay away from until the hunters are gone. It's also really important to wear things that blend in."

"Guess that counts this out." Elphaba said, gesturing to her grey skirt and deep red colored three quarter length blouse under which she was wearing a white shirt that hid the generous v-neck of the blouse from his view.

"Definitely, browns, yellows, greens – those are your best bet. Something that will blend in with the terrain so that when you stand still they don't see where you are compared to where it's just grass or some other animal. Also important that you don't use scented soap or shampoo in your hair because then they'll be able to smell it. In fact, when we set out snares for small game we cover part of the grass inside the snare with this." He held out something from his pocket, a little vial, which she curiously uncorked and sniffed.

She recoiled at the extreme smell the moment the cork, which was sealed with a layer of rubber she now knew was to keep even a whiff of the scent from seeping out from inside, was removed. She held her hands up indicating he should close it, which he quickly did. "What WAS that?" She demanded.

Fiyero just smirked, "Fox urine." he murmured, giving her a look to see how she would take this particular piece of information. To Elphaba this was not particularly concerning given that, though she did have the fox at home, he was a white Teumessian a breed that had been around Oz for centuries but were extremely endangered. The Teumessians were often gifted with magical abilities and could run faster than any normal fox and hers was no exception. The point was, she could see a difference between eating normal fox and the idea of her own and could separate the two without a problem. However, the overwhelming scent of the fox urine hung in the air making her feel like she just wanted to gag. It had been the worst scene she'd ever smelt and that included the horrific scents of the black pots kept in their tents for night use. Elphaba was beginning to adjust to life here in the Vinkus fairly well with Fiyero showing her the ropes, but that scent stuck in her nose in a way that was almost unforgiveable.

"That's the worst thing I have either smelt."

Fiyero nodded, "Me too, but it gets the job done." He said with a grin.

"Yero.. why don't you use traps? I saw some of the boys setting out rope snares, I've never seen those before."

He looked over at her, "You're smart enough and compassionate enough I should think you would know that. A snare doesn't hurt an animal the way a trap does. The animal will feel no pain before he or she is found but the snare-setter and humanely taken care of. Arjikis respect nature and we have no wish to cause harm to the things that supply us with life. There is no reason to be unnecessarily cruel."

Elphaba nodded, "I suppose it was obvious, I just never thought about it. Back in Munchkinland people use metal traps."

Fiyero nodded, his brow furrowed a bit. "I know.. " he was quiet for a long moment before she pressed him, asking what else she needed to know. It took him some time before he came around to think about her question again. "Alright, um well you need to know how to set a snare of course, it takes a special loop knot that, when the animal steps in and pulls it tightens up, but doesn't go too tight. They're a little tricky to do." He said, taking a length of rope from his pocket and making a loop which he then wrapped the length of the string tail around a couple of complicated loops and then tied it around her wrist. She looked down at the length attached to her and carefully inserted her other wrist through the thin loop of material. This would have been more amusing to her if she hadn't pulled. Suddenly her wrists were fastened tight together and no matter how she pulled the knots neither got looser or tighter and she tried frantically to turn her hands around to get to where her fingers could reach the knot and even tried to get it loose with her teeth but there was nothing she could do.

"Yero."

"Problem?" He asked, barely able to conceal his laughter.

"Get them off!"

He just smirked at her, which caused her to let out a growl from low in her throat, which only made him laugh more. "Are you _growling _at me?"

"Yes… yes I am. Now. Get. These. Off!"

Fiyero just grinned at her and reached over to undo the knot for her and taking the rope from around her wrists and when he did so, the edges of his fingers brushed just lightly against the skin of her wrist and it caused what felt like an electric spark to jump between the two. Their eyes met briefly before he went back to removing the rope from her hands. "Um and well.. what else. Oh, well when you walk you want to take broad, fast steps.. that's why it's called 'stalking'- the way you walk. Because it covers a great amount of ground fast without making a lot of noise. And you want to stay low, making your body as cylindrical and small as possible to keep your movement from being obvious to anything that might happen to be watching you from far away. Once you get up close to your prey you want to be very still and cautious and think about every step you take. Also making sure that you're not in the path of the wind because if you are it'll smell you and bolt." He said. "And of course, you need to learn to use a bow and arrow and how to make your own arrows and such. It's good to try to retrieve your arrows because you have to carve your own and they take a lot of work. They teach us as boys to practice with near targets so we don't lose the arrows and until we can hit almost every time so no one's work is wasted. A lot of time and energy will go into making a quiver for a young man and usually you don't get your own until you are around eleven or twelve years old. If you're a good shot it might be sooner. I got my first quiver the summer I visited Colwen Grounds a little before we left for the journey. I was very disappointed that I didn't get to hunt much with it before we left. It's custom to give a boy his own quiver when he has killed his first buck antelope for they're quite difficult to bring down and it shows what an accomplished young lad he is if he can get one. The tribe will feast and celebrate on his kill and usually the skin is tanned and given to him for his tent. It's important to know that every part of any animal that we kill is used. The skin and fur to make clothes and blankets, the bones to create tools, the insides in some medicines and such, the meat for food. It's very efficient we don't want to misuse anything the Spirits of nature are kind enough to give us."

Elphaba nodded, feeling surprised. "It's quite a bit more complicated than I thought." She admitted with a hint of a smile. "I still want to learn to do it, it just might take me a bit longer than I had originally planned for it to take."

Fiyero nodded, "Sounds like a good plan. But since you honestly seem to care so much, I'll let you shoot with my quiver. "Come on, we need to go away from the camp in case your aim isn't too good when you start."

She looked over at him in surprise. "But they're so nice and they must have taken you hours to make."

He looked over at her for a moment. "I didn't make them." He was quiet for a moment. "They were my father's. They were given to me when I was fourteen." He murmured softly.

"Oh.. I never told you that I was sorry." She whispered softly. Both of them were surprised to find that her hand had worked over and gently clutched his hand in hers, her fingers wrapping around his and giving a tight squeeze. "We never heard what happened even."

Fiyero looked away as he tried to steady himself and to keep his voice even. "He took me to hunt and I fell from a cliff onto a ledge below. I was lucky to escape with my life and the resulting rock fall panicked a large herd of elephants and they began to charge. Elephants can be very dangerous when frightened because they are so large and this was a group of mothers with babies which makes them even more formidable. They stampeded and my father was caught in their direct path." He murmured, looking away from her as he struggled to keep his eyes from tearing up. "That was the next summer after I came to visit you." He muttered quietly. "It was horrible and I still remember every second of that day as if it was yesterday."

Elphaba's fingers in his only tightened. "I really am.. sorry."

He nodded, "I know. I can tell." He murmured, feeling within himself relieved to know that her voice was so honest. He could honestly tell that she did care about what he had told her and seemed, in fact, to want to know more. She cared for his culture and was constantly asking questions and wanting to try new things and he found such a skill admirable. Few were so open to new customs and ideals and he respected her more for it. "I won't let you lose them. Besides, it's a very heavy bow and you won't be strong enough to shoot it far. You have to work up to shooting big bows if you want to do it really well so the chances of you shooting anything beyond my reach is slim to none.. scientifically I mean."

She smirked, "I love that you have so much faith in me."

He just grinned a bit as he helped her up. "Stay put, I'll run back to my tent and get my bow and quiver." He told her, taking off at a gait that she, as she watched him, found fascinating. His feet barely seemed to touched the ground at all as he ran, bounding through the tall grasses like a jack rabbit leaping over small rocks and things that were in his way. It was only a few minutes before he was back with a case that was of deep brown leather with gorgeous decorations pressed into it. This was a shoulder quiver, long and narrow and meant to go over one shoulder and hold the arrows, though it had a cap attached to it with a small leather strap that prevented arrows from coming out of the top if you were running or it was upset. The bow was made of a deep black colored wood with brilliant blue designs in it. "We carve out the designs into the white of the wood before we put the indigo dye in." he explained, "It just takes better and really looks more blue if you do that." He pulled out an arrow and held it out to her.

"This long part is called the arrow shaft. She how it's perfectly straight and smooth. You need that for it to be aerodynamic and actually fly. This arrow is made out of a medium weight wood- light enough to fly but not so light it'll fly somewhere you don't intend on it going." He said with a grin. "And then these three feathers here at the end are black swan feathers. They're very rare but their properties are said not only to be magical to bring in a good kill, but they fly really well too. If you can see how they're twisted a bit that's called a helical design and it puts a spin on the arrow to help it fly better and more accurately. Also, when you have any kind of natural fletching like this the feathers have to come from the same side of the bird because of how they're grown with a slight angle and such they just work better. Sometimes taking fletching from two different sides of a bird can actually cause the opposite effect you want from fletching; make your arrow fall or go off course so you have to attach them just so. My father always used thread and vine to make his and he said it worked better than glue or leather that other warriors used. I think he was right. Let's see, oh this part here is the notch feather, it's at a right angle to the bow to help keep the arrow from slipping off the string on you when you shoot. Some people say it makes the accuracy worse but I've never had a problem and, in fact, when I was getting a tough shot I was always glad to have the extra help so I didn't wind up just dropping the arrow in the grass. And then here's the arrow head. You can attach different types depending on what you're hunting for and that does make a difference since you have to dig it out later so you don't want it to go in deeper than you want but you need it to go in deep enough to inflict a kill instantly so you don't keep some poor animal wounded and wandering around. Being compassionate to anything you catch is important." He said with a sigh. "You don't play with food or anything like that. Being merciful really is important and I think often hunters from the east completely forget it." He said, while showing her how to string the bow into the arrow.

"Now, you're right handed so you're going to want to pull the string with your right hand because you have more control with your dominant hand. He moved to stand behind her as he showed her where to put her left fingers on the bow to keep her fingers from getting skinned up when the string bounced forward, such a thing could be painful. "Now you put your hand um.. here.." He said, moving to show her and then correcting her by gently taking hold of her hand and showing her where she should put it on the string, realizing with an intake of breath that she was standing in very close proximity to him and unsure why he was so aware of that. Alright, you've got it. "Okay.. now just pull back and when you're ready release. You want to make sure to follow through too. You need to look at where you want to shoot because if you look away your arrow is gonna follow your eyes." He gave her a few last second warnings before he stepped back.

Elphaba lined up her shot as she squinted one eye and caught sight of the target she was meant to shoot for- a dead stump perhaps twenty or so feet in front of them. But she also caught sight of something else near it. A rabbit feeding on some brush, unaware of their presence due to Fiyero being his quiet Arjiki self. She wondered if she care try to hit the thing and she had never decided whether it was truthfully talent or not that caused her to release the arrow, which whipped through the air with surprising speed. She was surprised at how much strength it had taken to pull back the string of the huge bow. She had seen Fiyero do this effortlessly and she wondered how he could pull so much weight, for one shot had left her arms weak and trembling and not even able to hold up the bow itself. Her eyes widened as she saw the rabbit fall. She had hit it!

Fiyero's eyes widened in disbelief. "You did NOT just shoot that rabbit.." he muttered, heading off in that direction through the grass. A few seconds later she saw him holding up the rabbit which he had made sure was dead, in one hand and the arrow in the other. "You got it! You'd either be a really good hunter or you have some beginner's luck, Fae!" he murmured. She beamed at him and ran forward to meet him, almost launching herself right into his arms but then stopping suddenly feeling too awkward about such a display of affection to continue, so she merely took hold of his hand and hung onto it tightly, her smile growing with each moment that passed as she examined the rabbit.

"We'll take this to Kayin's tent and let his oldest sister fix it into stew. Perhaps we'll bring an offering and they'll ask us to supper, for his sisters, though young, are quite excellent cooks." He said.

"You don't think they'll mind if we don't join them at the main meal then?" Elphaba asked in surprise.

Fiyero shook his head, "They probably won't miss us." He looked over at her for a moment. "I'm starving, let's go!"

She just smirked at her, "Men.. always hungry." She said, and he just grinned at her and took off through the brush like a deer and nearly as fleet footed, causing her to have to lift her long skirt and run in order to keep up with him, laughing freely as her long braided hair fell down around her shoulders in her haste. "Wait for me!"

~*~

Not long after Elphaba's experience with Fiyero's father's bow and arrows they began to spend even more time together each afternoon exploring Fiyero's world. It was one particular afternoon when they had been walking in the edges of the woods when they came upon a rushing stream. Elphaba kept far away from it, staying on the other side of Fiyero to keep herself from going near the crazily rushing water. It was high with the end of summer rains washing through the Vinkus now. She didn't want to take any chances. She looked over at him as they walked. "Don't your feet hurt?" She inquired, looking down at his dark skinned feet moving through the grass. He was wearing a pair of lightweight skin shoes that were covered with a kind of light material and then they laced with leather strips. They looked fairly flimsy and completely uncomfortable for walking in this kind of terrain with all of the tree roots and such being scattered all over the ground.

He just grinned and paused for a moment, undoing his shoes and taking one of them off, upending it in the middle of walking. It was not something she could have done by any stretch of the imagination. He did not fall, she knew she would have fallen as her balance was not nearly good enough to take off or put on a shoe while she was in mid-step, even standing up would have been a struggle. He turned it over and showed her the bottom of the shoe which was covered with a strange layer of something that looked like wax that was about a quarter of an inch deep and shaped like a footprint. "This is why they don't hurt. The wax is soft and bends with our steps and increases the traction of these shoes against things such as rocks, but it isn't so tough that it won't move with our feet." He explained with a small smile. "They're very comfortable and efficient for walking. I have never heard of an Arjiki getting blisters on their feet no matter how much we have to walk with moving camps in the summer. Perhaps I should get some of them for you." He said thoughtfully, looking over at her feet, "Those shoes don't look comfortable for walking whatsoever."

"Oh well.. they're.. manageable." Elphaba said, for she couldn't be completely dishonest and say that they were comfortable, but she wasn't in great amounts of pain yet either.

He looked over at her and just chuckled, "You're exceptionally stubborn, Fae." He said with a grin.

"I know.. my Grandfather has told me." She responded, looking over at him with a small chuckle.

"Hey! There's a pool over there." He commented, pointing over into the cluster of more dense trees. "Let's go!" he said, taking her hand and practically dragging her forward. Something told her that she should probably had attempted to pull away from his hand, but she didn't react in time and she was soon being dragged through the thick trees, unable to even see what was going by either side of them. When they emerged from the clearing it suddenly became obvious what he had caught sight of. The pool in question had a large rock wall at the far side of the pool which was far over either of their heads. It was rough and worn from the water pouring over it constantly in large waves of water. The pool itself was about thirty feet across and looked to be about four or five feet deep and the water was as clear and crisp and cool. It looked to Fiyero like the perfect place to swim. He rushed forward and leaned over the edge of the pool after clambering up the top of the rock that surrounded the water. Elphaba just sighed as she lifted herself up after him, her arms shaking from the effort and lifting her weight up and she wondered vaguely why he didn't seem to have had to put in any effort to get to the top part of the rock and still pulling all of his weight up onto the rock through that distance.

He looked around at her and grinned, leaning down to offer her his hand and helped to pull her up. "Thanks." She murmured.

"You're welcome." He said as he shifted himself to sit on the tall rock. It now became obvious that they'd climbed the ten feet over the rock that it was not all the way around the pool it was just a single large boulder overlooking the top of the pool with the water down below a few feet. It really was pretty with ivy being strung all along the rocks where it had grown and the whole thing being secluded in by many trees around it to make it feel very private. Fiyero leaned down and reached his hand into the water. It was deliciously warm and cool all at the same time, it was so clear he could see the bottom of the pool and he knew he was going to have to go in. He pushed his shirt over his head and Elphaba watched him, feeling her cheeks go deeper emerald. "Fiyero.." She muttered, unsure what he was doing.

He just grinned and left the shirt on the rock and turned, raising his arms above his head. She didn't know why it was that her eyes were attracted to the moving of his muscles in beneath his dark skin at his back and shoulders. She flinched back the moment he leaped in and tried to avoid the spray of water upwards. "Fiyero!" she protested, lifting his shirt over her to keep the water from hitting her.

He just grinned, "Come in! The water's great!"

Elphaba just looked at him incredulously and shook her head. "No." she muttered, flicking the shirt away from him carefully to avoid the water ever touching her skin. She didn't want the pain that she knew would come from even a drop of that water against her sensitive skin. A single drop of water would give her a painful red welt that would sting for a couple of days, more exposure could leave larger, more painful sores that could last days or more. She didn't know what made her skin that way, she only knew that it always had been, should do go into that water the pain would surely kill her for water burned her skin as effectively as acid might do to someone else. Those narrow minded people might assert that Elphaba was an unclean individual, but the truth was she was actually probably cleaner than any of them. She cleaned herself with oils and creams she had found to be effective as water for her and as for her hair she actually was able to wash it, though she had to be careful to use gloves when doing so to keep the water from getting to her fingers and had to be careful of her scalp which was every bit as sensitive as her skin. She was fortunate that the oils in her hair were well stabilized and she rarely needed to wash her hair more often than once every other week and it didn't look in need of washing in the tween times.

"Scared?" Fiyero asked with a grin, his eyes dancing with a held in kind of mirth. He had finally found something that Elphaba was scared of- he didn't think that would ever happen, or hadn't believed that it would. She kept herself so secretive that the idea was interesting he finally knew something that scared her, and, indeed he did, but not for the reasons that he suspected. A tiny part of him was sad that she was scared of something so silly as going swimming. Certainly water could be a powerful adversary at times, but that didn't mean it was something you should be afraid of but, instead, something to respect and live side by side with rather than running away from. Of course, he could never guess the reasons that Elphaba was so scared of it beyond that of other people.

"No I'm not scared." She said, giving him a somewhat haughty look as she wrapped her arms around herself. Truthfully she was scared, very scared. That water could kill her and that kind of knowledge was a scary realization. She didn't want to think about the power of a natural element that most people needed to live could kill her. She shuddered a bit and tried to deflect her mind from it, staring at Fiyero who looked up at her in surprise and something like a wounded expression. It was obvious he had expected her to change her mind and join him in the water when he taunted her about being afraid and obviously she had not done so with very good reason, but he didn't know that.

He sighed a bit, the fund of going swimming seeming to have been lost as he jumped up onto the rock and reached for his shirt to tie it around his waist, wet clothes and all. "We'd better get back it's getting rather later that I thought." He said decisively as he looked at the horizon line. Luckily, he seemed to have been beginning to forget her refusal to come into the water by the time they arrived back at the edge of the camp and seemed to have returned to his usual optimistic self.

~*~

The wind played little games with the grasses twisting them into long, thin fingers and then letting them go as the grass swayed in the dry breeze. The breezes here, at least at this time of year, were not cool and they did little to relieve the oppressive heat that kept all of them in its vise like grip. These breezes were hot and unrelenting and often brought up dust storms in the far south of the Vinkus where the Sour sand Desert held everything in its power. It was like this in the North too, from the Thursk desert.

Fiyero told her stories of seeing sand dunes as large as mountains and the great plains of sand as far as they eye could see. Elphaba could scarcely have believe it if she herself had not seen so much of Oz, certainly more than most their age had seen. As a child she'd been born in Munchkinland and soon dragged off to The Quadling becoming used to its hot, humid, wet climate. The heat was different here and it didn't feel as if you were breathing water as much as it had there. By the age of eleven she had ran all the way from the Quadling Kells to Colwen Grounds on the extreme eastern border of Munchkinland. By her twelfth summer she'd seen the wonders of the Emerald City, though Peerless was not much one for city life business took him there whether he wished to go or not, and by thirteen the mines of the Glikkus. Now at sixteen or as good as really, she had crossed Oz at its widest breadth and seen all that lay between Colwen Grounds and the Thousand Year Grasslands where they now made their camp. The only part of Oz she had yet to see was the glittering cities of the Gillikin where she had heard the tourism industry was greater than anything she had ever seen. She supposed they would go there soon enough, though certainly Peerless put that off for last being something of a typical man and wanting to avoid all that "Lady like stuff". In short, Elphaba felt somewhat experienced of the geography of Oz by now and the idea that there were dunes of sand as tall as a mountain was much more believeable to her than she might have imagined it to be some time before.

"When do you go to the deserts?" She inquired of him one afternoon as they sat watching the wind play its little game with the grasses.

"In the earliest part of spring." He told her. "Usually we go north to Thursk from Kiamo Ko and then along the outer Vinkus to the Sour Sands and back up through the thousand year Grasslands to here near the Great Kells and near Kumbricia's pass and the forests that make up the boundary between Munchkinland and the Vinkus. Sometimes we stop in the Lesser Kells as well, but not this year."

"The Lesser Kells and the Quadling Kells are separate?" Elphaba asked with her general curious nature.

He smirked, "It depends upon your definition of separate. They are called by different names but in reality there is nothing separating them aside of the line that is invisible and separates The Vinkus from the Quadling in the south." He said with a slight grin.

"Oh.. that seems a bit silly."

Fiyero nodded, "My thoughts exactly."

She was quiet for a time before she spoke again. "Fiyero, could you teach me to speak Arjiki?" she inquired. It was a quiet request and she thought there was a chance he might not even hear it to begin with, but as always, his excellent hearing from years of being trained to hunt did not fail him and he heard every word and in his characteristic manner took some moments before he turned to her with a curious expression on his face which she could not have interpreted had she wanted to.

His own thoughts at the moment were a conflicting set of surprise and happiness. He hadn't been expecting that.

"You want me to teach you to speak Arjiki?" Fiyero asked with a semi-disbelieving glance over at her as if he couldn't believe what she had just said.

"Well you needn't look as if I'd just said an obscenity. I was only asking if you could." She murmured, taking his shock for offense at the off, probably due to the surprised way he was looking at her as though he simply couldn't believe his eyes. Well, it wasn't his fault that he should be so surprised. It wasn't as if this was something someone asked on a day to day basis. Peerless knew how to speak the language fluently but Fiyero didn't know any other non-Arjiki besides him who knew how to speak even a portion of the language let along all of it. Then again, Peerless was an intelligent man for he spoke the language of the Quadlings decently and was at least familiar with the dialects of other places in Oz even if not completely fluent.

"No no..it wasn't that." He said with a small sigh, "I was just surprised. No one has ever asked me to learn it before. I suppose I could try." He said, looking over at her and attempting to give her a small smile. She shuddered when she felt his hand pass over hers on the warm grass in between them and wondered if he too felt that tiny electric-shock like feeling. If she had known that he did indeed feel it, she wasn't sure how she would feel about the new information but, of course, there was no way to know. He felt it.

* * *

Wow. it's been forever since I've had an update... I wasn't sure the second half would be long enough to be its own chapter (the one I'm going to put up in five minutes from now) and then it turned out being like.. hugely long. I totally apologize for the long wait and I hope this like 15k will make up for it. So what do you think of this one? XDD I like this one. I like that Yero took her out and showed her all of those things. I think my fave by far was totally the "Scared?" "NO!" XDD!!! Anyway hope to hear from some of you soon :) Enjoy.


	6. Realizations and Ramifications

_~*~_

_We are one, you and I _

_We are like the earth and sky _

_One family under the sun _

_All the wisdom to lead _

_All the courage that you need _

_You will find when you see _

_We are one _

_~*~_

It was as if the rest of the evening followed suit from this lesson in the afternoon which seemed the catalyst of the entire reaction to the events that would follow that night – a night which must surely be one of the most exciting either of the youngsters had ever experienced. Elphaba had returned to her tent after the evening meal and, to her surprise, saw a shadow of something on her hammock bed. She walked over to it quietly, moving to light the small lantern which sat in the center of the tent since she was the only one there at the moment, to her great relief. She reached for the package. At first she mistook the thing for being a pile of furs that someone had mistakenly left on her bed, but as she undid them she soon realized that the fur was only the outer covering of the parcel such as you can get packages wrapped in brown paper in the city. This was so wrapped in fur and tied with a piece of twine in a knot. Elphaba's nimble fingers had soon made quick work of the knot and she spread the furs out to see what she might find inside the parcel. What she did find surprised her. There, carefully pressed and concealed within the skins was a parcel of what looked like material and then fastened with a pin to the top of it, a note in familiar handwriting. However, Elphaba squinted angrily as she attempted to read it. The note was in Arjiki. "Yero.." she muttered in annoyance as she attempted to make it out. To his defense he had used the most elementary words as possible but still, she had only had one day of lessons. Albeit, she'd been here for almost two weeks now and had been soaking up everything here like some kind of sponge, learning and growing as a person through her experiences.

The best she could do was making out the general intent of the message though certain words didn't make sense she could pick up the gist. "There is a storyteller and dances and music tonight in the main tent. Please come. Wear this." There were other words but she didn't figure out what they meant and, truly, it mattered very little she had picked up the important concept. There was going to be a party with music and dancing and storytelling that night and she was to attend; Fiyero wanted her to attend, and he wanted her to wear this. It was certainly a bit strange and different, but she couldn't help automatically reaching over to look at the outfit in the glowing light of the lantern and that red light provided by the sunset.

Carefully she removed the outfit and gasped softly. She had never seen a more beautiful dress in her entire life. He wanted her to wear this? She swallowed a bit in disbelief. "Yero…" she muttered pulled in different directions. It showed off more of her skin than she was used to showing off, but it _was _beautiful and he had requested it and she knew women here dressed in this style for special occasions. On ordinary days the dresses weren't nearly so ornate. Moreover, how would she get herself dressed? She certainly wasn't going to ask anyone in her—

"Hi!" A voice exclaimed from seemingly out of nowhere.

"AAGH!" Elphaba shrieked, jumping at the exclamation which came out of the shadows. She had seen no one here before just now and it had given her a start when she heard the voice and saw someone jump out of absolutely nowhere. After all, don't you tend to jump when someone comes out of a dark corner in your room when you think you're alone?

A small figure appeared at this moment, bouncing right out from under Elphaba's hammock.

Elphaba let out a slow breath of relief as she took in the seven year old's sweet features and her graceful steps in her direction. She was Kayin's sister, or one of them and Elphaba had become acquainted with her over their dinner of rabbit stew from her kill. She had been surprised to find that though she wasn't usually fond of children she and Nya got along wonderfully and Nya had even convinced her to sing, an accomplishment in and of itself as singing wasn't generally something Elphaba felt comfortable doing in front of other people to begin with, however she'd managed to do it.

"What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be about ready for bed?" Elphaba inquired, still attempting to get her bearings again.

Nya giggled, "I saw Fiyero. He said you were gonna need help getting dressed and Kayin said I might come."

"He did, did he?" Elphaba muttered with a rueful, wry glance over at the dress that the young girl was holding. Had she not seen how grown up and mature children were here she never believed a seven year old could help her dress, but she no longer doubted these kinds of things after two weeks' experience here. "Well it seems to me that I am a little bit outdone wouldn't you think Nya?" she asked. The girl just nodded ecstatically with a huge grin that showed off all of her teeth. Elphaba let out a sigh. "Do you really think I ought to wear this particular dress tonight?"

"Of course.. it's beautiful! I can't wait until I'm old enough to wear dresses like that and go to parties and dances and things." She said with an envious smile. "Do you promise you'll tell me all about it Fae?"

Elphaba looked down at her in surprise. "Who told you to call me Fae?" She asked, softening her expression a bit when she saw that the girl looked nervous. "It's alright.. I was merely curious." She added.

"Yero…" she said quietly. "He said that's your nickname. Elphie, What's a nickname?"

Elphaba giggled in spite of herself as she sat down on the hammock and tentatively put the little girl on her knee. "A nickname is something that someone is called that is a name their close friends or families give them that is short for their name. Elphie, Fae and Fabala are all nicknames for the name Elphaba. My Grandfather calls me Fabala from the story and Fiyero calls me either Elphie or Fae." She explained with a grin, jiggling her knees slightly to make Nya bounce up and down on her lap which caused the little girl to giggle even more crazily and wrap her small arms tight around Elphaba's neck. Nya was, Elphaba thought privately, a gorgeous little girl. Her skin was light – the exact color of coffee with creamer in it and she had adorable dark brown eyes and thick, dark hair that fell in little ringlets all around her face. She was also good at taking care of a household even at her mere seven years and Elphaba knew that someday she'd make someone a very special wife before too many years had passed away beneath them.

"Oh! Like how we call Kayin, Kye?"

Elphaba chuckled, "Yes, like that." She said, "Now, if I'm going to wear this dress you had better help me into it and be going home before your big brother gets worried and comes looking at you. I don't think either you or I want to be in trouble with him, do you?"

Nya shook her head very quickly. "No. Not one bit." She said, moving to hold up the dress so that Elphaba could see it properly for the first time. It was something of a funny picture given that the dress was about three times the size of the little girl.

The dress was certainly beautiful it just tended to reveal more than Elphaba typically felt comfortable with and she looked at it with a worried expression and bit her lower lip to the point that it was somewhat painful before she nodded, "Alright.. I'll wear the dress but we'll need to hurry or I'm going to be late." She stated with a small sigh as she looked at it again, unable to believe what she was about to do. She tried to just focus on the dress as she considered it. It was made of a bright, medium yellow-gold fabric that shone in the light of the lantern placed in the center of the tent. Elphaba had noticed that yellow seemed to be a color appreciated by many people here in the Vinkus. Actually, all bright colors were appreciated, but yellow seemed to be above them all, almost as if it were the royal color, though Fiyero had told her there wasn't actually an official color or anything, merely that it was well liked by people here. The cloth that made up the dress was unstitched and the buttoned and knotted in certain places to hold the dress and thus making it available to be worn by a woman of a general size or really almost any size rather than only being able to be worn by a small percentage of people. She expected this kind of dressing was efficient here and also it made for a perfect fit of dress instead of being a general fit it looked perfect for each woman's body who wore it.

The material of the dress had a seeming pattern (though it was rather spaciously separated instead of being all crammed together next to each other, it was a wide parted kind of pattern instead of a ridiculous one. Black diamonds which were all over the fabric, didn't seem to be filled in solidly but were rather filled in with what looked to be a blackened filigree. The top portion was separate from the bottom except for a swath of fabric which stretched diagonally across her right side from the upper chest and wrapped around the right hip attaching to the skirt portion. This meant that a small slice of her stomach would show from the middle to her left hip. It wasn't really a revealing of her torso so much as it was a single swatch of skin showing through. Not even any of her belly showed to begin with, but it still felt rather revealing to her. There were shoulders low off the edge of the shoulder blade but still there and the neck was asymmetrical formed by the boundary of the piece crossing the front of her chest to the right hip downwards. On the left shoulder there was a large swath of fabric that crossed over and hung to either side: front and back: of her bare arm and the border of this was about four inches wide to each side and covered in a very dense portion of the filigreed diamonds. From far off it could even look like these were really filled in since they were so close together to begin with. The skirt of the dress was long and reached the ankles and was a lined but with quite a lot of material to it to give it a little fullness. The skirt was covered with the filigree diamonds as well. The bottom portion of the skirt had the same four inch border of dense filigree as the border of the shoulder excess of material. This left both of her arms below the extreme upper arm (as the sleeves were capped really) bare as well as that area of her left side, stomach and around the waist at the back until that was interrupted by the diagonal swatch of material that had wrapped around the back as well. The dress was then covered with tiny seed pearls sewn into its bodice.

"What will I wear on my feet?" Elphaba asked with a small grin.

Nya smiled back, "I brought you some shoes."

"Not your shoes right?" Elphaba inquired, looking down at the little girl's feet to make sure that she was wearing shoes. She was not.

"No they're not."

"Then what happened to yours Miss Nya?" Elphaba asked with a curious chuckle.

"Well, I left them somewhere. In our tent I think. I don't really know, it wasn't that important at the time. I was too excited about helping you get ready for the party."

Elphaba smirked a bit, "Alright Nya, let's see the shoes so I know if they will fit."

"They will fit."

"How do you know?" She asked.

"Yero gave them to me and he said he knew they would fit. How do you think Yero knows what size of shoes fit you?"

Elphaba just sighed and shrugged a bit, "I don't know, you should let me know when you find out how Yero knows everything that he does because I'm rather curious about some of his suspicious amounts of information myself."

"Okay!" Nya said cheerfully as she expertly undid the fabric on the bed making sure she knew where all of the buttons were and where it fit to be knotted. "Okay. I am ready."

Elphaba sighed as she reluctantly undressed. She was unused to being seen without her clothes and she had to check herself and remember that Nya was a little girl, only seven years old and it wasn't going to matter if she saw something. She probably didn't even know about those kinds of things yet. She laid her regular clothes on the ground and looked around as Nya gave her the muslin strips to bind her chest with. Obviously the camisole she was wearing wouldn't work here given that it went down to her waist and would simply have looked ridiculous. She hadn't thought about wearing different underthings with the dress but she took the strips nonetheless. She turned into the shadows and slipped the camisole off, shivering as the air hit her skin. She carefully tied the strips around herself, though she hardly needed to do it as her chest was, in general, rather small even though she was almost sixteen years old she regretted that she didn't have much to say of in feminine wiles to speak of, but still she would have felt naked without wearing something. She already felt naked enough! She held up the second piece of this and found that it was merely a small strip of cloth that tied at either side of the waist. It was far different from the knee length underwear she was wearing under her skirt. "Um.. Nya…." She murmured.

The little girl ran over and put her hand on Elphaba's shoulder. "Don't worry we all wear them like that."

"Even little girls?" she asked in slight disbelief. "All of you wear this kind of underwear?"

Nya nodded, "Sure. Do you want to see mine?"

"NO!" Elphaba said, a hint of panic entering her voice a little bit. "No.." She tried to sound a little bit calmer at this point as she took the tiny piece of cloth back and dropped her long underwear to the ground and slipped into the tiny garment, blushing profusely. "I look ridiculous." She muttered, looking down at her flat stomach and how much of her slender hips and long, skinny legs that were revealed as well as her newly revealed stomach and back except for the small amount of her chest that the binding hid.

"No.. you look fine and besides it's not like you're wearing just that silly. You're going to have a dress." Nya said pointedly as she ran over and retrieved the material and helped her slip it over her head, putting herself into the swaths of material that swirled around her as it went down over her head and fell to her feet. Nya was at work momentarily as she pulled and poked and tied and snapped and buttoned so fast her little fingers flew over the material. Elphaba gave up trying to follow what she was doing.

"I'll never be able to dress myself." She said with a long sigh.

"Oh you will.. it's not as hard as it looks the first time." Nya assured her with a big, encouraging grin.

"I hope." Elphaba said with a small smile as she looked down. "Are you done dressing me yet?" She inquired hopefully, wanting to get a good look at herself in a mirror before she had to go out and see anyone. She didn't want to look ridiculous.

"Alright, go and look at the mirror." Nya said, giving Elphaba a gentle push, "And then I can do your hair!"

Elphaba just chuckled, "You really enjoy doing this don't you?" she inquired as she moved across the tent still in her bare feet to look at the mirror. She raised an eyebrow in disbelief. It looked strange to see herself in that brilliant color. She was used to wearing darker colors that didn't make her skin stand out, but right now she looked, to her disbelief, like some exotic flower, but yet.. not in a bad way. Her eyes widened a bit more.. she actually looked beyond passable, she looked pretty even. It was one of the first times that she had felt honestly pretty or worthy of anything and it left her feeling surprised.

Nya came up behind her. "You look so pretty in that Elphie." She breathed enviously. "I can't wait until I'm older!" She reached to get a brush and began to run it through Elphaba's dark hair. "I'm going to get some camellia oil and put it in your hair. That's how all of the girls here make their hair shine. It'll look really pretty and you're going to wear it down tonight too."

"What? Nya? I don't wear my hair down very much at all. I like to have it braided."

"It'll be pretty down and besides. Yero likes your hair when it's down."

"He does? Wait, Nya.. how do you know all of these things?"

"I know everything. I'm small and I'm good at sneaking around and finding out things that most people don't know. No one notices me you see. Now sit down here on the floor and I'll sit in your hammock and fix your hair for you." Elphaba looked at the little girl in disbelief. She had never before believed that a little seven year old girl would be able to boss her around like that and that she could feel so powerless like she just had to do what the girl had said. She just sighed to herself and held up her hands in defeat before she moved to sit on the ground, being careful of her dress that it did not get dirty in the grass. She didn't want to get such a beautiful piece dirty in any way and she didn't even know where it had come from. Had she known it probably would have made her even more nervous that Fiyero had borrowed this particular dress from his mother and it was one Baxiana had worn in her 'younger days' so to speak.

Elphaba sat down and cooperated as Nya started carefully combing her hair to make sure all of the tangles were out of it. Elphaba kept trying to look up at her nervously, which, needless to say, didn't bode too well because it kept knocking her hair out of the way. "What are you going to do to it?" she asked the girl nervously.

Nya just grinned, "Trust me. I have the perfect style for you. Come on, let's practice your Arjiki while I work on your hair. You can never have enough practice. It is a tough language to learn but I'm sure you'll do fine and you already know more than you think you do." She pointed out as she continued to brush Elphaba's hair and reached over into a white porcelain pot on the dresser. Elphaba noticed it belonged to Ebele and was about to comment on this particular point, but just gave up when Nya chattered on in Arjiki and Elphaba struggled just to pick out the minority of her words at this point. She committed herself to listening in hopes of improving her rapidly growing vocabulary.

Running her brush through Elphaba's hair, she paused to pour a few drops of oil from the container into the brush and then brushed it through her long, thick lengths of hair. Elphaba was surprised at the result. The oil coated the strands of her hair very lightly, just enough to grab it and give it a little bit of shine without looking as though she'd forgotten to wash her hair for the past few weeks. It made her hair look darker and more lustered than she had ever seen it before. Nya made her sit still as she continued to work on Elphie's hair, pulling it and twisting and poking and pinning. It was about fifteen or so minutes before she was satisfied with her work and turned to the older girl to give her a mirror so she could see. Elphaba was surprised and pleased when she caught sight of her hair. "Oh Nya!.." She whispered in disbelief. "It's gorgeous!" She moved over and could have spontaneously hugged the little girl but she restrained herself just in time and didn't do it. Her hair was pretty, really pretty for the first time. Nya had twisted tiny braided knots into it in a pattern at the back crown of her head and somehow stacked it so that it very much looked like she was wearing a tiara of sorts, but made up of thin, twisted, French knotted bits of her hair about a coin each in size. This only used up about half of her hair while the rest of it was left to hang naturally to the waist. Few could have pulled off such a hairstyle because it required a lot of long, thick hair and most women didn't have it. Even here in the Vinkus this was a rare hairstyle and Elphaba knew it. She felt strangely pretty at the moment and more than qualified to go out to an Arjiki celebration.

Nya smiled, "Now.. don't forget your shoes." She said, putting them on Elphaba's feet carefully. "You're all ready." She said, helping her off the ground. "Ohhh.. you should wear earrings." She said. "Something fancier than those little pearl ones.." She considered for a moment. "I'll be right back!" she exclaimed, running off. It took her about two minutes to get back and she had earrings that were made of a pattern of amber and onyx pieces strung together in a long, thin strand like drop earrings. She slipped them through the holes in Elphaba's ears and then clasped the matching necklace around the back of her long, slender neck.

Elphaba smiled at her reflection in the mirror and carefully reached for a small vial of perfume that smelt of lavender and night jasmine from her trunk. It was wrapped in two hankies knotted together to keep it from breaking in her trunk on the difficult journey over the Kells and it had survived wonderfully. She dabbed the perfume on her wrists and a little bit at the back part of her neck just below her ears and another small bit across the skirt of the dress, just enough to give the essence but not make the smell overpowering. She caught sight of Nya staring at her preparations and chuckled. "It's perfume from the East. Come here and I will put some on you too." She said, tipping a bit of the watery like liquid onto Nya's wrist. "Now rub your wrists together like this to spread the smell all over, "That's good." She said. "and now I really do have to go so you had better get back to Kayin or he'll be getting worried about you. It's awfully late for a little girl to be out and about."

When she entered the main tent it was dim lighting but she could hear the noise from the crowd gathered, seated inside. Now, in place of the table that had held all of the food not so very long ago, there was a clear floor space and some curtains hung up to make a sort of make-shift stage in the front. All of the people were sitting clear of this and Elphaba noticed that these were all either adults or teens. There were no families here, it must be an event with only adults and such. She looked about the room and caught sight of Fiyero who smiled at her and waved, gesturing for her to come and sit on the blanket he and a few other boys were sitting on. She felt her cheeks heat as his eyes caught sight of her in the dress. He obviously had an advantage over her as his eyes were already adjusted to the darkness of the room. She felt her cheeks only go warmer as people turned to look at her and she felt all of the eyes that Fiyero seemed adapted to. In some ways he was treated much differently than a 'prince' in Oz. Here, though they held a great respect for his station, at least his own peer group of boys were friendly with Fiyero and talked to him and spent time doing things with him and such. It helped the tribe leadership, she thought she'd heard her grandfather say. If the generation that would one day make up the tribal council for the next years had all grown up together and knew each other it was much more beneficial and they were likely to be friends rather than enemies struggling against each other for power or having a coup or something like that.

"You got my note apparently." He said with an even bigger, slightly impetuous grin. He obviously found the whole thing amusing and his big smile kept Elphaba from feeling too horribly annoyed about it.

"Yes. I got it. And understood it- mostly."

"Good, you're getting the hang of it already, perhaps we should all speak in Arjiki to you for the rest of the night you know the school of tough--."

"NO!" Elphaba protested, trying to look severe, though all that happened was her beginning to get a case of the giggles as she tried to keep her look stern but didn't manage to accomplish it. "Yero.. don't you dare!" But she knew it was too late. She wouldn't hear another word of Ozian for the whole rest of the evening at that rate and, worse yet, there was very little she could do to change it as the boys seemed to think this kind of initiation was warranted and totally fair. Not even Kayin was there to 'save' her from them. Elphaba briefly wondered if this was why even though he was a few years older and more than eligible to marry he hadn't done so. Was it because he didn't have any time to socialize with anyone because of taking care of his sisters? or had some girl just not caught his fancy yet? Or both. She sighed a bit herself and made a mental note to think about this more clearly when they weren't chattering in Arjiki and expecting her to try to follow it. Understanding it was hard enough and her lessons hadn't progressed enough to really allow her to speak it over a few phrases, so she mostly kept quiet as they boys talked. There was music and dancing of tribal leaders wearing huge headdresses that cast chaotic, guttering shadows up all over the wall. She might have been scared if he weren't sitting in between all of the strong, brave boys on this blanket. The only tiny mar on the evening thus far was the fact that she now knew where all of the girls that shared her tent were. They were here, staring at her with an all new level of malice. Elphaba did not place it and tried to ignore the glares that were so dagger like.

It was a little while later when some of their own age group started to join in the dancing. They danced in big circle dances and celebrations and occasionally Elphaba joined one if Fiyero coaxed her into it, but more often than not she just preferred to watch the swirling of colors dancing before her eyes in the darkness. She didn't know the patterns of the dances yet and also thought there was a good chance she would likely make a complete fool of herself and watching was more fun anyway. A little while after the dancing had started to include the younger members, Elphaba also noticed a few of the older teen couples sitting around. Each of them shared the blanket they were sitting on alone and had a blanket they shared wrapped around their shoulders and over their heads (not their faces of course) but just draped about them like a shawl. "What is that for?" She asked softly.

Fiyero felt his face burn for a moment as he looked back over at her as if the answer might be obvious, but when he saw she didn't know he rescued her with the answer. "They're kube-tu.." He murmured with a grin.

"What's that mean?"

"Song of two.. I don't think there's a direct translation into the Ozian dialect really, but it means that they're sweethearts. They're probably all going to get married in the spring before the summer caravans move out while everyone is near Kiamo Ko. Only those who are serious about relationships share a blanket because it symbolizes that they have agreed to share not only their hearts but the burdens of life. What I mean is, anyone who is sharing a blanket communicates to the world that he or she is going to hold themselves responsible for the person next to them and making sure they are happy and cared for and in general.. well you get the idea. They're teens who have made some kind of a serious commitment past running around with each other even if they're not engaged. We younger ones tease them about it a lot of times and they really can't say anything because the whole tribe knows what sitting under a blanket means."

He shivered a bit as he looked over at Elphaba and thought about what it might be like to share a blanket with her. Of course it wasn't as though he could admit that he wanted to.. but he did want to. He considered how it might feel to be free to pull her warm body into his and to be able to hold her close with the free feelings of those who were sitting under blankets tonight. As a young boy he'd always felt like he was growing up a bit faster than those around him and had secretly dreamed about when he would find a girl that he felt worthy of asking to share a blanket with him. Up to this summer he had never found anyone that he would even consider. What about now? He shivered a bit and felt his face warm and a strange feeling enter his stomach. Oh yes, he felt quite sure now that he had found someone he would like to share a blanket with. Of course it wasn't like he could tell anyone yet- not even her, but the fact remained that he knew it and even if it was a secret inside of himself that was kept for a long while, it made his heart beat a bit strangely and felt as though it were warming him and making him happy from the inside out. Someday that would be him.. him and Elphaba.. he knew it. However, before he could consider his dreams any further, she pushed the thoughts from his mind with her next words.

Elphaba grinned, "I like that. It's a good tradition. I think they have the right idea. Love is supposed to be about more than just the good times. Love is meant to be stronger for the good times and the bad times and a lot of young people today just don't understand the commitment they're making and they get in over their heads. My Grandfather's always telling me to make sure that I pick someone I can imagine growing old with and sharing all of my thoughts with." She looked down at her hands for a moment. "I just never told him that I wasn't sure I would find anyone like that. I'm too different from all of the others I think."

Something inside Fiyero felt like it had snapped. Everything in him screamed at him urging him to speak. He wanted to say, but managed to restrain himself, "I'm different too!"

A little while later when the couples had begun to pair off to sit on their own and talk instead of having big groups of people sitting around on the blankets there were more slimmed down pairs or trios. It was then that Fiyero reached a hand to her with a shy kind of smile and asked quietly, "Would you like to dance?" Elphaba shivered for reasons she couldn't exactly name because she didn't understand. Fiyero, for his part, was very nervous as he awaited her answer. He was not at all sure about what he had just asked and he didn't even know if she knew the custom but he was guessing that she did not. The idea of asking a girl to dance with you in this manner was usually that which carried some weight. People did not do it unless they meant something by it and, especially, that particular dance he had chosen. He reached for her hand and slowly pulled her to her feet with her nod of approval. Elphaba's own heart was pounding like it never had before and her face was hot and her fingers were a bit shaky as she wrapped them around his fingers. "I don't know the dance though."

"It's alright.. just watch me." He whispered quickly before the music began. He turned around to face her and then made an movement which she mirrored with her own hand. He smiled at her which deceased her nervousness at least a little bit from what it had been. His touch was sure as he brought his hand to the side of her waist that was covered with the material of her dress. She felt her eyes travel from his dark hand resting along her hip up to his eyes and she swallowed.

"Alright?"

She nodded as she carefully placed one hand on his shoulder and allowed the other hand to locate his and her fingers worked through it. They had held hands before but it hadn't been quite like this and it wasn't as though before when they had done this there had been anyone watching, they had been alone and that changed things significantly. She tried not to think about the people. For his part, Fiyero was glad that there were people here, it made him even more proud that people were seeing them dancing. Slowly he turned her in a circle and spun her wide as the maracas and the drums increased their tempo. Her dress flashed in the light from the torches as he gripped her hand securely and spun her around and around faster and faster like a top and she didn't seem to get dizzy. She was spinning so fast that she was a blur and the others around them had stopped dancing in order just to look at her and stare. They were impressed with her ability to keep up with the Arjiki dancing that most people couldn't handle unless they'd practiced. Turning and spinning she moved and twisted as he guided her. To be sure, it wasn't as though she'd somehow learned the dance, but he led her through every step and she found that she trusted him not to let her mess up even though she hadn't believed this was possible- to trust someone quite so readily. After a bit he let go of her hand and quietly held up his own to her "Wait." He murmured softly and so she stood there watching him as he began to dance on his own, apparently for her, in honor of her, or something to that effect. He spun and bowed, jumping back, his feet leaving the floor. There were tiny beads that clinked together attached to his heels and they made a beautiful melody of music that went well with the percussion at every movement he made. She noticed that he too was dressed in the manner of the tribe.

He wore long pants that were loose from below the knee that looked almost dressy. Above the knee they were tightly fitted and the entire piece was embroidered with fancy designs of grasses – the pants were obviously a reproduction of the savannah before them. The bottom portion was where the little beads and such were attached and so were claws and teeth and such. The pants were high waisted going up to about the top of his ribs and then he wore no shirt on top. His chest had been painted with strange streaks of color in blue and yellow. His skin gleamed because he was beginning to sweat a bit from frenzied dancing and his breath came faster with his effort. He wore a necklace of bead and bone around his neck and his face was the only thing lacking decoration. Even his hands had been painted with those intricate line designs that she recognized as Arjiki symbols and even knew what some of them meant. He was gorgeous, she realized. This thought caught her off guard. It had been unexpected and she was unsure whether it was welcome or not- she thought that it was. She focused on his frenzied dancing. He jumped and twisted in mid-air as the balls of his feet meet and he contorted his body into wild proportion as she bowed and swayed in a way she had never seen anyone do before. This put even his dance of welcome those nights ago to shame. This was much more exotic than that had been and obviously a lot more work.

When he stopped he turned to her with a smile. "Your turn." He breathed, letting his hand brush, to her shock, along her lower back. She shivered and her eyes flashed to his, but she didn't pull away from the touch.

"M..my turn? Yero I can't do that!" She whispered in panic. "I don't even know what you did!"

"You don't have to do what I did… just dance, do whatever you want." He reassured, slowly letting his fingers touch her cheek with a new, unprecedented closeness that she had had yet to experience before this moment. Her skin burned under his touch, but in a wonderfully pleasing way. Another thing she hadn't experienced coming true with him. She nodded, surprised at herself. Back in Munchkinland she never would have been so bold as to consent to dancing in front of a crowd who was clearly watching only them, but here, with him, she felt brave enough to do this.

"Okay.." She said, taking in a deep breath and nodding in consent as she carefully spun around once, her dress swaying out around her. Slowly she lifted her arms around her shoulders and began to spin in the same motion he had done, pulling her dress with her so that she didn't trip on it. She understood now, if this kind of dancing was common, why it only reached to the ankles. To have it any more than that would be a nuisance and dangerous besides. As she spun she began to go faster giving her feet a slight kick upwards now and again to make the beads on her dress at the bottom click as his had done when he was dancing. The drums, she realized in disbelief, were following HER. While she danced slowly they were beating slowly and she guessed if she speeded up they might join her in their speed. She could hardly believe it and, at that moment, she felt beautiful and exotic and well.. good.. she normally would have felt uncomfortable with so many people watching her but now she didn't. HE was watching her and even that felt good. It made her feel proud and happy that she could do something similar to what he had done. She was dancing now, just for him. Elphaba did not know that in her dancing she was confirming her intentions to court the young man standing in front of her and even if she had known, it was a face that she might have felt, though nervous, also proud.

Her dancing sped up and she tossed her head causing her hair to dance in the swift wind that her movements had created. Her skin was beginning to get sweaty and she didn't even care. Her eyes fixed on his and stayed fixed on his. She wouldn't blink and neither would he. As she went faster and faster, she reached out her hand to take his and he followed her to his feet. Slowly he came close to her to finish the dance with her. His movements were hesitant, as if he expected her to change her mind.. and.. deep down.. he did. He hardly thought himself worthy of being with her.

His hand rested on her lower back again and, this time, he didn't move his hand away. Their other hands joined and she gave his a nervous squeeze, which he returned. "It's okay." He breathed and she nodded in response to this as he turned her around and around in the dusky light of the candles and torches. They danced quietly for perhaps a few more moments before the music drew to a slow close. He stepped back, lifted her fingers up and shy kissed her closed hand and gave her a half bow before he moved to sit down, leaving her standing there in disbelief, her breath coming faster and faster before she moved to join him sitting down. As she moved to sit she caught sight of some of the girls from her tent and, mysteriously, every one of them were glaring at her as though she had just done something that was a national offense. She checked herself but didn't see anything the matter and attempted to brush it off as she sat down next to him on the blanket where they had been before. She didn't know if he realized the girls were staring with malice at the two of them, but she guessed that he did not. Truthfully Fiyero did not notice because his mind was far too full of what had just happened between them and the fact that she was so close to him at the moment. Hesitantly he wrapped his arm around her shoulders.

Her eyes flashed to him and held for a moment. He was about to move away when she reacted by scooting a fraction closer to him and allowing her face to rest lightly on his shoulder. His smile was big as he looked down at her curled against him. She seemed tired and he tried not to move the best he could being fairly successful at this. She didn't consciously remember going to sleep, but she must have, for the next moment he was gently shaking her and telling her to wake up it was time to go back to their tents. She reached to rub her eyes and looked up at him with that surprised expression that happens when you've been woken in surprise.

"Alright." She said yawning as she stood to her feet with his help. "I'll see you tomorrow."

He nodded with a smile. "Of course." He responded. "Sleep well." He said.

"You too." She responded.

She walked quietly to her tent, her arms wrapped about herself.

Her tent was buzzing when she returned, everyone was talking and the moment she appeared the girls went silent. It was that kind of awkward silence when you know everyone has been talking about you. Elphaba just held her head high and said nothing as she undressed- this time in plain view of them, not even caring. She normally escaped off on her own to change but not tonight. She felt proud of what had happened that night and it didn't matter to her anymore. She had a new kind of self confidence she had not yet experienced and a new kind of pride as well that had spawned from dancing with Fiyero for all to see.

"Who's been in my camellia oil?" Ebele asked, turning to look with a disgusted glance at Elphaba, silently accusing her. She didn't need words at this point.

Elphaba just shrugged with a slight smirk and put her shoulders back. "If I knew I wouldn't tell you." She said, moving to lay down in her hammock and pulling her covers over her.

All was quiet for some time before someone spoke again in the dark. "Do you think she's asleep?"

"I dunno are you asleep?"

"No.. are you?"

"No…"

"I can't believe her! He's MINE. Doesn't she understand the meeting of hands off!? I can't believe she has so little respect for me and my position. You know Fiyero belongs to me!"

"Well we do but apparently she doesn't. Maybe you should set her straight."

"Yes.. yes.. maybe I should set her straight." Ebele responded.

"But he DID dance the courtship dance with her. He must return her feelings."

"SHUT UP."

Elphaba's eyes widened in the darkness in beneath her blankets. Fiyero had danced a courtship dance with her? A dance saying he wanted to be her.. well.. boyfriend wasn't quite the right word- her suitor.. in front of all? He had made it public? She swallowed in a kind of disbelief .She wasn't completely sure how she felt about that beyond a shocked kind of wonderment. She still was trying to sort out her confused jumble of thoughts as she drifted off to sleep. Tonight had answered few questions for her. In fact, it had actually raised more than it had answered. It had, however, answered one important question. Why did Ebele and the others in her tent hate her so much? It was jealousy and ridiculous little girl insecurities. It had nothing to do with her skin color or any other reason. It was strictly their own inability to deal with the fact that Fiyero liked her and… she liked him. Elphaba's heart almost felt like it had stopped with the sudden realization. She truly did and she w_anted him _she wanted him more than she'd ever wanted anything and she was not going to let them have him. Those girls knew nothing about him other than that he was rich and a prince. They didn't want him for himself but for his position and the position they would in turn inherit. And she, Elphaba, was getting in their way. She closed her eyes as she settled down further. Well.. that was an interesting turn of events. It helped to understand why they hated her so much and she had begun to realize that it was likely going to get worse before it got better. It didn't stop her from saying a quick prayer of thanks to the Unnamed God for sending Fiyero her way if he had had anything to do with it and for keeping him as innocent and sweet and unchanged as he had been at eleven years of age. She had a lot of things to be thankful for this season and many new opportunities. It had been a wonderful day and for the first time.. she thought she might just have a true 'crush'. Her heart was still pattering a bit faster than normal as she drifted off to sleep, her dreams reflecting the events of that evening. "Yero.." She breathed much too quietly to be heard.

* * *

oohhh our first real hint of Fiyeraba!! Hope you enjoyed it.. I know I was getting the shivers writing it. Wonder what's gonna happen with Ebele.. how'd you like getting two chappies back to back.. XDD I especially love how the girls point out Fiyero likes her and she's like SHUT UP.. LOL!! nothing like your plan getting foiled!!! BAHAHA I love thwarting Ebele so I'm sure it'll happen a few times. Alright well I have to go XDD I'm off to see NM. Remember Reviews make me write faster XDD .. I think..


	7. The Birth of a Man Through Blue Diamonds

_~*~_

_And a voice _

_With the fear of a child _

_Answers _

_Ubukhosi bo khokho (Throne of the ancestors) _

_We ndodana ye sizwe sonke (Oh, son of the nation) _

_Wait _

_There's no mountain too great _

_Oh, oh, iyo _

_Hear the words and have faith _

_~*~_

The girl was a problem. A liability. She had to go. If Fiyero succumbed to her charms it would all be over. His whole plans would be well, foiled. He needed a plan and he needed one fast. Scar moved to stand from his desk and chair where he had been sitting and began to pace crazily back and forth between the opposite ends of his tent. He had no idea how it had gotten so serious without him having any idea about how it had happened. He thought he had been watching so carefully, he thought he knew everything that had happened in young Fiyero's life and then along came this nasty surprise that his nephew had become rather more devious than Scar had ever imagined his soft brained nephew could be. He was a little bit too much like Marillot for his own good.. or for Scar's lack of benefit. He just brought his hands up to rub his temples with a kind of frustrated grimace that usually appeared on his face when he was getting a splitting headache. This tended to happen when he over-exerted his sensitive brain too much. That tended to happen to him more and more recently since he had come up with his little plan. He would let nothing stand in his way including this girl. His plan would not fail, could not fail and this girl was causing it to. It was time to act. As he had said before. The girl had to go. Now. He needed a new plan a new plan that would get rid of her once and for all.

~*~

"Left foot … right foot… stay low down, keep yourself small." Elphaba murmured with a slight grin as she followed through with each of the actions she had been instructed, repeating them to make sure she remembered. She crept along in the grass barely making a sound. Even Fiyero had to admit that he was impressed with her ability to 'stalk' as the Arjikis called it – this way to move through the grass so seamlessly that no sound was made. Normally you had to have been born here to be truly good at stalking and she really was good at it, surprisingly so actually. Of course she was a beginner and there was always room for improvement, but even with these last couple of weeks of practice she was doing better than he had ever expected her to… "You're doing so-…."

UMPH!

Elphaba let out a groan as she fell face first into the grass in front of her, all of the wind knocked out of her, rendering her completely unable to move. She lay there in the grass, stunned, silent. She heard Fiyero cough, and then again. It didn't take her more than a minute to realize he was trying to disguise his laughter in the coughs and, for some reason, this cheered her as she slowly lifted her face from the ground and looked up at him. "You were saying?" she inquired with a slightly sarcastic smirk written all over her face that even made his lips twitch.

"Maybe that's enough for today. I don't think your Grandfather would be too pleased if I brought you back to him in multiple pieces. Do you?" He inquired, holding out his dark hand to help her to her feet and she just shook her head and grasped his hand, leaping to her feet with a bit of help from him and attempting to catch her breath.

"No probably not. I'm getting pretty hungry as it is. Actually, my grandfather asked if I would join him for supper this evening, perhaps you should join us. Between my sleeping in the girls' tent and him spending all of his time in those diplomatic talks with your mother, well, I have barely seen him since we came here and it is a rather strange sensation. You see, I'm used to seeing him every day for a good deal of the day and now I haven't been. It's quite strange really, I miss him." She admitted, looking over at Fiyero. The tone of their conversation had suddenly turned rather grim indeed. He reached for her hand and slipped his fingers into it as if to comfort her.

"Well I'd be glad to come with you this evening. I haven't gotten a chance to really get to know your Grandfather yet because, as you say, he's been rather busy as of late. I wouldn't want to interrupt any diplomatic progress after all." His words were half serious, half teasing. His eyes were sparkling with good humor and hidden laughter and this brought her out of her more somber thoughts and returned her to her happiness of before.

He was grinning at her as he walked beside her and began to swing her hand broadly back and forth as he walked a bit faster almost halfway skipping, but not really for that might have been a bit childish for someone of his age. Elphaba grinned wider at him and made her feet go faster to keep up with him, it was easier now that she was wearing Arjiki clothes that weren't quite so confined.

Ever since the night of the story teller she had been beginning to dress a bit more in Arjiki fashions. She hadn't asked, but somehow clothes always showed up. She was quite certain that Nya had been put up to this by Fiyero, but she never got the courage to ask. She also noticed that, though they were Arjiki clothes, they respected her preference of being rather modest, long dresses with high waists that tied, though most were short, capped sleeves in order to keep her from becoming too hot. She appreciated this as her former clothes had been too warm indeed. She wore Arjiki sandals now without worry instead of her tight laced shoes which had been long since abandoned in the bottom of her trunk in the tent along with other clothes she had seemingly forgotten. There were also more formal dress for occasions, but she had had yet to wear any of those again since the special night of the story teller and dancing. Currently she was wearing a full skirt of deep red-brown coloring with navy blue diamonds, a navy and cream colored belt tied in the back that made a wide waistband and a white shirt with short, puffy sleeves. Her hair was pulled back high with a ribbon and she'd plaited it into a thick braid she then folded over the top of her head. Or well, it had been… it was not coming down with a lot of her hair coming unfurled from this thick braid and hanging down her back. Her face was flushed a light emerald color from exertion and the excitement of the afternoon as well as their 'stalking' lessons.

She grasped his hand tighter and leaped forward over the nodding, yellow heads of the strands of grass. Fiyero watched her in disbelief, his eyes instantly focusing on her to be sure that she didn't hurt herself. A jolt of adrenaline rushed through him as she leaped and he made sure she was safe on the ground before he allowed himself to grin. He just shook his head in amusement as she continued to leap like the giant jack rabbits of the Vinkus over the tops of the grass and each time his hand tightened just in case she should slip while she was jumping around. He didn't want to let her get hurt. She began to make her jumps higher and faster and farther and he began to jog slightly with long strides to keep up with her, never letting his hand break from hers. Both of their smiles were growing and their faces were becoming flushed when she tripped.

Fiyero's arms shot out before she could hit the ground and grabbed her, stopping her from falling more than halfway. Slowly he lowered her to the ground like a fellow whisking a lady around in a dance. He had a big smile all over his face- like a cat who caught the canary in a way. She was smiling too and she looked up at him as he held onto her from his place where he knelt with his knees on the ground. Both of them were laughing for a moment, but when their eyes met both of them were suddenly infused with a new kind of seriousness. His heart was pounding as it never had before, even the night they were dancing. He still wondered if she yet knew the meaning of that dance, but he was too shy to ask her and so he resisted.

Gently his fingers came out and touched against her cheek for the briefest of moments. She shivered slightly as her eyes widened and focused on his. He felt that he wouldn't need to breathe for the next hundred years. Her face was soft, her skin perfect, her cheek a bit harsher contoured than most women's cheeks, though he found this beautiful in her. He found everything about her beautiful actually, not that he was sure he was ready to admit anything like that… but it was the truth. Slowly he leaned towards her for a moment and his forehead brushed very lightly against hers. She pulled back for a moment with an almost confused expression on her face. He looked down at her for a brief moment and swallowed. "Okay?" He whispered, it came out as a question though he wasn't sure if it was only a question or if it was also some kind of a statement of his own feelings at the moment.

He leaned closer to her for a moment and she felt her eyes close as he came close enough to feel her breath against his face. Slowly her fingers lifted up to affix around the sides of his face, causing both of their skin to tingle strangely.

At this exact moment there were a sound of the grass popping and then a throat being cleared and both of them shot apart from each other, their faces turning deep green and deep red respectively. Both of them fell back into the grasses apart from each other and looked up to see the towering form of Scar. Elphaba's throat contracted and she felt her skin break out into an odd kind of sweat and her fingers clenched together harder. Fiyero's reaction was similar to her own as he felt each of his muscles go tense. He had never been particularly comfortable with his Uncle who, since his father had died, had hung very closely about he and his mother and it made him feel strangely uncomfortable. He didn't know what Scar wanted but it put him on edge. His gut instinct told him that all was not as simple as it looked with Scar. He wanted something more than to be a part of their family. He had been an outcast not really interested in anything and then he arrived back from his travels to the Outer Vinkus right before Fiyero's father's death. He didn't know what the man was about, but it was nothing good and that was for certain.

"We were just.. um.." He began, not really knowing what to say as he looked awkwardly down at his hands. "We were just practicing stalking and Elphaba fell and I had to catch her." He said with a small sigh.

"I see, well your mother and I would like to see you if it's quite convenient for you." There was a tone in his voice that was absolutely dripping with a kind of disdain mixed with sarcasm that made Fiyero squirm literally.

"Of course, I'm not busy now. I'll come with you." He looked over at Elphaba with a small, sad kind of smile. "Be back soon." He mouthed quietly, reaching for her hand and giving it a small squeeze before he moved to follow his Uncle. If he had been particularly observant at the moment he would have noticed that Scar's eyes followed his hand and his lips curled in a kind of annoyance that really had no explanation, at least not one that Fiyero knew…

He followed along behind Scar until they reached the diplomatic tent meeting room where they found his mother sitting at the table, uncharacteristically quieter than usual and with a kind of thoughtful, brooding look that she often had when she was trying to work out particularly frustrating or puzzling problems with their tribe. "Hello, Mother." He said softly. She looked up in surprise and put on a smile for him, though he could see through it to her worry, no longer a little boy that could be deterred by a mere smile and a few nice words. He looked over at her with a worried expression of his own. "Is something the matter, Mother?"

"No no no quite the opposite dear boy!" Came the jovial response from Scar who was standing there rubbing his hands together happily. "Certainly not everything is perfect, marvelous. How could you think otherwise when your mother and have decided… Well perhaps you ought to tell him." Scar said, pulling back slightly and looking over at Baxiana a bit regretfully as though he longed to be the one to deliver this extra special news. Fiyero, for his part, was trying to figure out how and where it was his Uncle's right to make any decisions regarding his life. It wasn't like Scar was his father or anything so what right did he have to say 'your mother and I have decided' should it not have just been his own mother making these kinds of decisions? Was it really to a point that his Uncle needed to interfere into their family when it came to decisions about Fiyero's own life? Needless to say he knew better than to complain and swallowed the slightly annoyed thoughts racing through his mind. It would do little good for him to say anything because it wasn't as though anything was going to change.

"We've decided that it is time for you to undertake the passage to the rite of manhood into our tribe and to become a true man in every sense of the word. It's time for your Blue Diamonds ceremony, Yero." She said, coming back with that rather sappy looking expression all over her face that made him worry she was going to cry. He didn't like to see anyone cry, least of all not his mother. He swallowed another awkward moment and then moved to press a kiss on her cheek as he murmured, "Thank you mother." As he knew he must. Fiyero felt divided in half as every young boy probably does when told it is his turn for blue diamonds. Perhaps even more given that as the future ruler of their tribe he had to take more diamonds than any other young man in the entire tribe and that made him even more nervous. The thought of even one or two of those diamonds that he had sat and watched being carved with bamboo into other young men's' chests would now be happening to him and though it did bring on a kind of fever of excitement it didn't completely make up for the nervousness and inhibitions already flooding him. Who wouldn't be nervous about such an event as getting your Blue Diamonds? Moreover, Fiyero felt a keen sense of aloneness as he remembered that other fathers usually spent the week or so before the ceremony doing things with their sons and that Fiyero would have no one to do this with, though the worry was quickly wiped from his mind only to be replaced with something seemingly even more cruel.

"We have decided it would be in the best interest for the tribe." Scar continued in his usual monotone, "If you were to receive your Diamonds at the next cycle of the lights at the end of this summer before returning to Kiamo Ko to spend the winter. There is no necessity for you to wait a whole half a year more when it seems you have already earned the wonderful privilege." He said with a big smile. "This falls, it appears, at first black tomorrow evening. Isn't that exciting?" He inquired with a slight smirk, as if he knew that he had been rather cruel to give the boy no more time to prepare than twenty four or so hours, hours in which he could have exhausted himself to dull some of the pain that would come from the grueling process of having the diamonds tattooed into his skin in front of their entire tribe and with nothing to dull the pain, not allowed to yell or cry out under any circumstance whatsoever. He could have tired himself out to make the pain less as his body would have ceased true thought by that point. Apparently Scar had other ideas and it was just another on the list of reasons for Fiyero to dislike his Uncle.

Of course, there was nothing he could just say and so he nodded.

"I'm sure you know all of the ceremonial details. You have seen the ceremony itself done a few hundred times and so I doubt there's much that I will need to inform you about, though I do suggest that you be prepared and ready to go tomorrow for the most auspicious of timing. Your mother has been making some things for you to wear on that your night of Blue Diamonds. I will see that they find their way to your tent when they are finished being made." Scar said with an unkind smile. Fiyero continued to nod feeling in a daze as he somehow mechanically answered the questions asked of him and pretended to interact and be a part of the conversation even though he was really looking forward to simply going back to his hammock and escaping all of this for awhile. They were ruining everything. He knew he had to have his ceremony, but currently it mattered very little about whether it could possibly be a good thing or not as it might have done for you if you had just learned that you were about to go through what Fiyero was.

He was relieved when he was allowed to escape to the privacy of his own tent and just mull things over. He felt relieved that he had a tent to his own for the present. He wondered vaguely if it had been truly his mother's idea for the ceremony but had soon drifted off into a restless, fitful kind of sleep that didn't truly bring any rest.

Meanwhile, Elphaba was sitting across a small vine box in Peerless' tent which he was sharing with the diplomats. They had kindly gone out somewhere and let him have the tent to himself given that he was going to have dinner with his granddaughter. "Fiyero's supposed to be joining us." Elphaba said as she placed two whittled bowls full of some kind of stew or soup on the table in front of each of them. Her brow was furrowed with worry for her friend. He should have been here by now and Fiyero wasn't the sort to go back on his words.

Peerless sighed a bit, "Elphie, I don't think Fiyero will come." He said as he took a small bite of his soup and winced, his eyes watering. It was warm and he'd taken too big of a bite. He mentally scolded himself but used the extra seconds to figure out what to say to Elphie, who looked indignant at his suggestion that Fiyero might not show up for their prearranged evening meal. He held up his hands to stem her protest. "I don't mean he would just not bother to come, but from what I've been hearing from his mother and the rest of the diplomats and elders from the tribal council they have decided it's time for your friend to have his Blue Diamond Ceremony. Actually it's very interesting from a sociological standpoint and I think it's quite a good thing that you and I will still be here to see it."

"Blue Diamonds? You mean like the ones that Kayin has?" She inquired.

"Well, yes.. Kayin and every other adult member of the tribe. You see, they consider the blue diamonds as a sign of manhood If a boy is old enough to have the diamonds then he is considered a man. He must receive them like a man without crying or acting like a young boy for it is a test of his strength, his bravery, and his endurance. After the diamonds have healed. After the diamonds a boy is considered a man in the eyes of the tribe, old enough to have his own tent if he wishes and to take a girl and ask her to be his wife." He explained. "Thusly the age is different for every boy. Generally the parents or parent, In Fiyero's case, decides when the time is right for their song to receive his diamonds. You see?"

Elphaba considered this for a few moments. She wasn't sure that she did truly understand it. "It's interesting that in one night they can consider someone a man just because someone put some Blue Diamonds on his chest. I don't really understand how they can call that entering man hood. It's only a single night, nothing actually changes."

"Well you're right in a way I suppose. It's not that the diamonds change him themselves. They are a symbol of the changes being wrought in him over the past few months or years. They are just a symbol of the manhood being formed you see? They don't really do anything in and of themselves other than mark a boy as a man old enough to make his own way in life. The process of receiving the diamonds is usually scary but it is also a big honor and so boys are both nervous and excited. Also, they didn't give Fiyero a lot of warning from what I have been hearing. Apparently it's fairly customary to give a boy at least a week of notice and Fiyero's ceremony, again this is only what I have overheard, is going to be much sooner than a week, though the exact date I do not think was set. If I am correct, which I would suppose I am, well, Fiyero's mother is probably telling him about his diamonds or just did not long ago."

Elphaba nodded, approving of this, "I think so. Scar came and found us earlier when we…" She felt her face go a bit red and swallowed. "Well, what I mean to say is.. Scar found us earlier and wanted Yero to go with him and so he did. Do you suppose he's worried about the diamonds then?" She asked, biting on her lower lip thoughtfully in that way she had when she was lost in her own train of thoughts.

"Probably so. Would you be? If it was you?"

Elphaba nodded again. "Yes." She said.

They finished their dinner in almost absolute silence, though it wasn't the stony kind of silence that comes of any kind of argument but more each being left to his or her own thoughts without any discourse. The only interruption that came was when a very large man who was approximately seven feet tall and probably two hundred or more pounds came to the edge of their tent flap. Elphaba supposed she should have been used to the towering Arjiki warriors by now, but she wasn't given that Munchkinlanders were so small to begin with it only made them look that much taller in comparison when Elphaba thought about her own people who, unless they had blue blood from the aristocracy of Central Oz like she did, were very short indeed. The tall man smiled and gave them a rather formal bow before he handed Peerless an envelope.

"The Arjiki Prince Fiyero requests the presence of your Eminence Peerless Thropp and Miss Elphaba Thropp the Third Descending at his Blue Diamonds ceremony tomorrow evening at first black. A warrior will come to escort you both to the designated area the ceremony will take place. There is to be a feast in a few days time when the Prince is healed from the ceremony to celebrate his entrance into manhood in our tribe." The warrior said, bowing once and then running away to the next tent that he was meant to deliver an invitation too. Elphaba expected that everyone in the tribe would likely be invited to such a large event, though she wasn't at all sure since she'd never been do a 'diamond ceremony' of course, it didn't really help that the man had said they would need to wait to have the celebration until after Fiyero had healed. Elphaba wondered just how much he was going to be hurt during this ceremony and continued to worry about it through the rest of the evening. She found herself jittery and unable to settle to do anything. Even the other girls in her tent noticed and (rudely) commented on her inability to stay in one spot. She just ignored their teasing, too worried about what was going to happen to her friend the next night to pay them any mind.

Elphaba became more worried still when all the next day there was no sight of Fiyero. They had not missed a day of stalking the Grasslands and running through the woods not so very far away from their camp a single day since Elphaba's arrival and the fact that, despite checking all of his favorite places, she could not find him, had begun to worry her even more. What if he had gotten sick? Would they still make him go through with this ridiculous ceremony anyway?

By that evening she had concluded she wouldn't be able to see him before the ceremony began and settled into her tent to pace and worry. The other girls were gone by now and she didn't know where to or really care. She was actually relieved that they weren't here for her to worry about them. She dressed with slightly shaky hands, her whole mind committed to what Fiyero might be thinking or doing right now. She was unsure of the dress for one of these ceremonies and chose something that felt pretty but not overly done. Then again, she didn't think she was any expert on Arjiki fashion and Nya was nowhere to be found of course. That was predictable. Whenever you needed someone they were never actually where you could find them- just when you didn't need them.

Elphaba was distracted from her thoughts by the arrival of a warrior at her tent. He had her grandfather with him and a few other people as well whom he had stopped to bring with him to the ceremony. She rushed to join the small crowd and reached in the darkness for her grandfather's hand. He seemed to sense her urgency though not exactly what had caused it because he squeezed her hand back. It was only then that she looked up at the sky and gasped quietly. It was quite late in the evening given that summer days in the Vinkus were extraordinarily long, so anything taking place at first black would be well after nine p.m. before it was dark enough to be considered 'black'. The sky was a huge dome above her almost like standing in a vast building with a domed top, but still much too wide to ever be considered a building, though that was the general appearance of the sky, likely through optical illusion. A few stars were twinkling in the sky like it was a large piece of black velvet and where the tiny rips were pinpricks of light from whatever was behind it could show through. The grasses and everything below the horizon line had gone black and long shadows crept along the earth. However, none of this was what really attracted her attention, that would have been the strange, red glow that was high in the sky above them. She couldn't explain it for it wasn't a glow like the sunset- it was a much purer scarlet-vermillion color in red and yet at the same time it was more muted and pastel than a sunset, but it was so powerful that it seemed stronger than one at the very same moment. It was also very high in the sky, much higher than the light is when the sun is nearly that color and about to go over the horizon. This light was almost directly overhead and it was obvious it did not come from any sun or star or source of light that Elphaba could see. It seemed to absolutely shiver in the light breeze that was present. It also seemed to trail off at the edges into nothingness, almost like clouds do. "Western lights." Elphaba breathed in disbelief. "I've read about them but I didn't think I would ever see them."

Peerless grinned and wrapped his arm around her shoulder, pulling her lovingly to his side. "Ah you make me remember my first trip here with my own parents." He said with a small smile, his eyes far away in memories. "I was very excited the first time I saw the lights as well. They are a very special sight and few ever get the opportunity to see them or appreciate them for what they are." He pointed out.

She nodded, "Well, I certainly appreciate them."

"Which is why you are my granddaughter." He pointed out.

She nodded. "I suppose it's a good thing it worked out that - .." She stopped short as she nearly tripped flat on her face when she found a hole in the grass. Peerless' hand tightened in hers reflexively to keep her from tripping and Elphaba vowed hereafter to keep her eyes where she was walking instead of up at the lights. She also couldn't help noticing the large moon in the eastern sky behind them. It seemed larger than it did in Munchkinland, though she doubted that it actually was any larger.

The path they were currently walking down had been made by laying some kind of broadleaf plants all over it and the grass tamped down before so that they would lay flat. About every two or three feet pushed into the ground on either side of the makeshift pathway there was a glowing torch lit with a yellow-orange flame that cast some light on the pathway, though the dark was so pressing that it seemed to do very little good. Perhaps this was why they had escorts who picked their way through the darkness as easily as if it was the full light of day. It didn't take them long to arrive at their destination.

The first thing Elphaba saw was a pyre which was burning stacked at least twelve feet high. The logs were put together end to end, standing up on their ends like a sheaf so that they leaned on each other and the ground and would eventually collapse, though they were so large that she doubted that would be any time soon. The flames from these logs were very large and high and bright. The fire glowed from inside the logs, all through them, not just at the top. She didn't know how this fire had been made but she was intrigued by it, almost forgetting to continue walking until she felt her hand pulled lightly. She jumped slightly and focused back away from the fire to the rest of what was before her. There were a few benches arranged longwise in a semicircle around the front side of the fire and a lot of empty space between them. She saw what this was for already as a lot of Arjiki children were sitting on the ground in the empty space, chattering and laughing and smiling. There was an air of excitement tonight that couldn't be suppressed and even she felt it. "The ceremony is the same for every boy." Peerless explained to her quietly. "This isn't because Fiyero is a prince, for every young man who has his blue diamonds would incur this kind of to do with the entire evening devoted to him and the whole tribe in attendance, but I do have to admit that the excitement tonight seems to be greater than ever."

Elphaba nodded, "He is their future leader, I suppose it makes sense doesn't it?" Her eyes went back to their thoughtful exploration of what was around her as the warrior sat them on the first tier of the benches in a place of honor. Well, she guessed it was because Peerless was seated next to Baxiana and there were other members of the tribal council who were higher ups sitting on this bench as well. The people here were only arranged in a semi circle around the front of the fire and it became obvious that no one was meant to sit behind as the view would be much poorer from there with the fire in the way. There was also a circle of fairly large stones around the outside edge of this circle with guards standing astride the stones. Elphaba got the message immediately 'no one crosses this threshold.' She shivered again at the sheer size of the guards and moved to take her seat, having no wish to tempt fate or the guards' good humor, though everyone seemed to very happy tonight and the air was permeated through with an aura of happiness. She wished she understood more about what was to take place tonight, though she supposed she would figure it all out in good time when she was meant to know and concentrated her efforts on watching the guards' actions as they deterred young children away from the line of the rocks, keeping them from crossing and sending them back to their mothers. She smiled slightly at this sight.

The only person nearer to the circle, though not in it, besides the guards was an old man that Elphaba vaguely recognized as sharing Peerless' tent. "Who is he?" she whispered to her grandfather.

"His name is Rafilwe." Peerless whispered back. "He is one the leader of the tribal council. The only one that has a seat higher than he is the current leader of the Arjikis. It is a position he has held for three generations. He was best friend and caretaker to Fiyero's father all of the time he was growing up and is Fiyero's Godfather." Peerless returned at a quiet whisper. "The man is a warrior and as you can see has fought in numerous battles. He has done a great service to the people of the tribe and they honor him like no other. Everyone has respect for him. Generally all of the young children, whether they are related to him or not, call him Grandfather." He returned at a quiet whisper.

The man was certainly old, older than anyone Elphie had ever met she guessed. He was very dark skinned, but it didn't keep her from seeing the scars that crisscrossed his back and arms and chest and stomach. She guessed his legs too, but there was no way to know because of his long, high waisted tribal pants which kept her from seeing his legs. They were made of what looked like suede or skin and laced together up each leg. The cuffs were wide like Fiyero's had been that night but not covered with much ornamentation at all and did not make any sound as he moved. The man was a bit stooped and he was bald too. Even from this distance she could see the bright blue of his diamonds standing out against his skin. It was still a mystery to her how they could find inks that stood out with the startling clarity of the diamonds. The man was leaning slightly upon a large staff made of what looked like a long swatch of knotted locust wood. It had been carved and sanded and made and had obviously taken quite a bit of work. It was the largest, thickest walking stick Elphaba had ever seen, and though the man was using it to move around the circle- inspecting it- she had the distinct feeling he could have thrown the piece of wood aside and walked just fine without it. He leaned down at regular intervals to adjust the position of one of the stones and the guards actually moved aside for him to do this so they obviously had no problem with it. He was apparently meant to be doing this. Elphaba noticed, when he turned, that he wore a strange looking leather pouch on a thong around his neck. The pouch was cinched closed at one end to keep whatever was in it from falling out. He leaned down in the light of the flames and began to spread things out in the grass at the edge of the stones. He spread a deer skin inside the circle and smoothed out the wrinkles in it with his hands. "I expect that will be the first buck that Fiyero ever hunted. The mothers save them for these ceremonies." He said in a hushed voice into Elphaba's ear.

She nodded, but didn't turn to look at him, still preoccupied with Rafilwe, who was now spread out long things that looked like sticks of some sort with a rather sharp point on the end. There were sticks of varying sizes and, at a closer look, she could tell that it was bamboo. These sticks ranged from ones so fine as a bone handled needle to large ones as large as their arms were wide when stretched out. He laid these in a row next to each other and placed out some earthenware pots next to them with tiny lids as well as pieces of soft cloth.

Fiyero was not nearly as calm as the people waiting outside for his ceremony to begin. He didn't know how he had managed to keep from coming completely unglued with nervousness and was relieved that he was alone now and thus was able to pace and frown and, in general, worry about what was going to happen to him at the hands of Rafilwe. He knew the man had done the diamond ceremony for longer even than his father had been alive, but, somehow, this didn't help much. When it was you nothing like that ever helped much. He just was relieved at the sheer aloneness of his current situation finally allowing him to the chance to ask the spirits for help, to fall apart if he wanted- well, maybe not… someone could come to fetch him at any moment and if they saw him crying he supposed it would reflect poorly on his tribe and prove him an unworthy leader if that were to happen. Instead, he focused on getting dressed. At least that was a task he could set his mind to. He was to wear the most formal dress of the tribe and began to unfold the clothes from the skins. He had bathed earlier, for cleanliness was important not just for the hygiene of the ceremony but also as a ritual. After the bath he had been prayed over by the leaders of the tribal council and had spices and such sprinkled over him while he knelt on a skin in the woods as bare as the day he had been born for this process. He supposed it was normal but it had felt somewhat embarrassing at the same time. The elders didn't seem to have any problem with it, however, and so he had neglected to comment. Who was he to challenge the ways the tribe had kept for generations? He finished dressing and looked at himself in the one mirror, sent from his mother's tent. He was ready.

It was not long after that Kayin appeared in the tent flap. "What're you doing here?" Fiyero asked in surprise, not grinning as he normally might have done to see his best friend, though he did embrace him.

"Thought I'd come see how you were doing." Kayin murmured.

"Lousy." Fiyero muttered, "I can't tell anyone except you but I don't want to go out there. I just want to stay in here and not get the diamonds. I don't want to do it. Can't I just back out? And don't you dare tell me that I don't meant it because I do mean it! I do! I'm not going to do it. No way in hell. I'm not going out there. You can't make me!" He exclaimed, standing up and beginning to pace the length and breadth of the tent in an agitated step as if he could run away.

"Hey I never said you didn't meant it. You know, I think every boy goes through this. I know I did. I didn't want my diamonds either. At one point I actually told the elder who came to fetch me to just turn around because when I got my diamonds I was likely going to cry and he said that it wasn't at all uncommon to want to back out at the last moment, but think how you'd feel if everyone knew you decided not to get them. It'd be a downer to be the only guy in the tribe without even a few diamonds. Besides.. after the first couple or so you don't even feel it anymore."

"Really?"

Kayin shook his head, "Nope actually you don't see or feel much of anything. It's kinda like being in a trance. I thought it was just me but when I asked the other older guys they said it was the same for them too. After a bit they just stopped feeling it. And then after it's all done you 're allowed to have bitters and other herbs to help the pain and to help you sleep. The tattoos are only small so for most of us the majority of them are all done healing in five or six days or less, but it's only the first couple or three days that you actually feel bad. Plus they hardly ever scab. Rafilwe's a real pro, he knows _exactly _what he's doing and most of the guys never got scabs or scars or anything from their diamonds either. So don't worry you'll be fine and the stuff about backing out that you're thinking and feeling doesn't make you less of a man when all men feel it. It just means you're normal."

"I'm not a man, Kayin." He muttered with a sigh. "I don't even know what being a man is- not really." He said, plunking down on the bench in the middle of the tent.

"You will. Everyone develops their manhood with time and I don't know too many men who didn't wonder if they understood what being a man was all about a few times before they got there. You'll be just fine. I thought I should come and check on you before the elders came to get you."

He smiled a bit, "Thanks. Really. I appreciate it. You since well.. my Dad isn't here to…"

"Yeah. I get it." He said, looking over at his friend. "I think people forget sometimes that because your Dad isn't here anymore maybe you don't get told all this stuff. They assume you already knew."

"Well I'm glad you didn't assume or I'd be a lot more of a mess right now!"

Kayin grinned. "Exactly. You'll do great out there."

"No small consolation that I have to get more diamonds than anyone else." Fiyero muttered.

"Hey it'll be cool.. remember I had to get the second most."

Fiyero nodded and reached over unabashedly giving him a tight hug. "That means a lot more to me now than it did when you got them all those years ago."

Kayin smirked, "You didn't even feel sorry for me back then. You were like ten and you thought diamonds were cool." He snorted. "All I can remember is your Dad telling me he was sorry you thought it was so very cool and one day you'd appreciate it a lot more."

"He was right." Fiyero said quietly. "He always was- right I mean." He was quiet for a moment, thinking. Fiyero's parents had chosen Kayin out of all of the boys from the young ones in the tribe to receive those marks. Kayin's parents had died not long after that choice as well, but it marked Kayin as the mentor who would show Fiyero the way into his manhood as a friend while he was a teenager and the person who would one day be his closest advisor when he took over the tribe as his own. Who would be second in command and who would assume the throne should Fiyero not have an heir to take over his place. It was the most prized position of honor to a new Arjiki prince or king. He supposed Kayin had had a lot of patience to put up with him when he'd been four years older and could have been off playing with his own friends but had, instead, stuck by Fiyero always bringing him along to join in whatever they were doing, insisting that he be treated like any other young boy in the tribe. He had more than fairly done his share of bringing Fiyero to this point and Fiyero was grateful. "I appreciate everything you've done as my friend and I hope that I didn't cause you too much trouble getting me here and that I won't in the future."

"Stuff that nonsense, Yero. I enjoyed it. You truly are my closest friend and you would be whether or not our parents had made some kind of arrangement when we were little kids or not." He said with a serious look. "Now come on. They'll be here any minute to get you. I better be getting back and finding myself a seat with the others. The entire tribe is there, hundreds, even the migrants who go off alone most of the summer have arrived for this."

"Kayin. Wait!" He exclaimed.

The older boy turned back for a minute. "What?"

"Is…" He shook his head and felt his face burn. "Never mind." He muttered.

"Naw, what?"

"Well, It's not really that important I was just going to ask you if someone was there but it really doesn't matter so."

"Elphaba? And His Eminence?"

Fiyero just nodded helplessly in admission. "Yes." He muttered, feeling his face get even hotter.

"They're there. Peerless is sitting next to your mother and Elphaba is with him."

Fiyero grimaced slightly and nodded, "Well then, I really will have to make sure that I don't let anyone know that it hurts."

Kayin smirked. "Right. See you soon."

He nodded, taking a few deep breaths as he watched his friend go. Now he had only to wait for the guards to arrive and take him. He hoped they would come soon and he was relieved to find that it was not even five minutes after Kayin left that they arrived with the cape he was to wear which they fastened to his shoulders- that which every man in the tribe for many generations had worn to this ceremony. It was filled with the knowledge and blessings of the elders and years of other men who had gone through this same ceremony which brought him comfort. He barely recognized himself once he was completely ready. He wore tribal pants made of tight skin which swished out slightly at the bottom. There were no bells on them like at the party but there were a lot of ornamentation that would shine and sparkle in the fire. The entire garment had been covered with things to bring luck, sewn into the garment by his mother. There were eagle claws, and tiny river-stones. So much work and love had been put into these that he felt special wearing them. They were the traditional sort, cut very low. So low they revealed his hip bones to allow the diamonds to be placed down his sides as low as possible. Luckily they were fitted or he would have worried about losing them. At this point, however, he was not at all worried. His feet were bare and he wore no shirt save the long, crimson colored cape made of feathers of a phenix. It tied about his neck and swept down to his feet. Eventually it would need to be removed to do his arms and back, but his chest would receive the diamonds first.

For most men, depending upon their rank, they would only have their chest, shoulders, and hips done so the cape was not in the way. For him he must endure the marks on his chest, down his arms and hands, on his back, on his hips and sides, his feet, and neck. Kayin's marks were almost identical to him save those on the hands and feet and lower back.

The last piece of clothing was a large headdress which also trailed to the ground made of white and black feathers and small stones. The headdress was certain ornate and it weighed a good ten pounds or so, but at this moment it didn't feel quite so heavy as it would probably feel by the end of the night. His face had been painted with blue and gold paint as it had been that night. Faces were generally not tattooed as they were sensitive and so generally the cheeks were painted with a line of bright blue and gold following the line of the cheekbone and the forehead as well which had been done for Fiyero tonight by his mother who had been crying most of the time, though he supposed it was understandable what with him being her only child and such that it was his Blue Diamond ceremony that she would cry while helping him prepare.

He walked between the two guards and a hush fell over the crowd as they entered the circle, or, he did. He was the first person to enter it and the only one that could save Rafilwe for the circle was meant to protect him and the magic should not rub off on others except he and his diamond worker. He was relieved to see the familiar face of the man looked as calm an reassuring as ever as he entered the circle and Rafilwe followed him. He was dressed in his skin pants as well and his chest gleamed with oil which had been applied that day as the blessings were said for good fortune for his work that night and for Fiyero to receive the marks of manhood. He did noticed that Rafilwe's eyes were suspiciously moist.

"I never thought I would live to see this day. Your father would have been very proud of the man you have become." He murmured quietly to Fiyero as he embraced him and Fiyero squeezed back tightly, his own eyes becoming strangely moist with the words that had been whispered to him. It was good to know from someone who had been to his father what Kayin was to Fiyero that his father would have been proud. If his Godfather believed that he had done well then he must have, though the being a man thing still felt quite new and confusifying he supposed he must be doing alright. The crowd became hushed when they saw Fiyero arrive and enter the circle.

Elphaba was watching everything that happened with a solemn expression, trying to see everything at once and not miss a moment of this experience. Fiyero looked, to her, a stranger. He was a true Arjiki prince at this moment. He was formidable, tall, strong.. he was not the same boy, it seemed, who had been laying in the grass with her not so very long ago. Just the previous day he had been one person and now it was as if he was a complete other. Someone she did not know. Fiyero moved to sit in the center of the skin cross legged and closed his eyes. He only saw through the slits of them as Rafilwe moved to the fire and removed a handful of powdery substance from the bag around his neck and tossed it into the fire at the bottom of the wood. Immediately the flames shot upwards in shades of green and blue, dancing together. Blue diamonds on a green field. He noticed that he liked the colors together, though he couldn't exactly figure out what it made him think of.

Elphaba's mind was whirling as fast as his was while she watched the flames leap up. Rafilwe moved from the now green and blue flames to kneel on the ground in front of Fiyero. From out of nowhere drums began to beat, pounding a slow but still steady thrum of percussion in the background. The man began to speak quietly, but still everyone was so silent they could hear all of the words he spoke. "Ubukhosi bo khokho. We ndodana ye sizwe sonke." He breathed.

Elphaba's eyes crinkled in concentration as she tried to place all of the words. "Throne of the ancestors.. son of the nation." She breathed silently.

After he had said these words, Rafilwe lifted the lid off of one of the jars and when he brought out his thumb from the pot it was bright red. He lifted it and showed it to the rest of the tribe who yelled what sounded to Elphaba like approval. He leaned forward and made a mark on Fiyero's forehead with the red stuff and then gathered the dust from the cleared circle for the fire mixed in with cool ash it looked and he blew it lightly across Fiyero's forehead. Keeping his ancient hands on Fiyero's shoulders he began to speak the ancient words of the ceremony as the drums died to a very quiet tone, though they continued to beat rather restlessly. After he had finished he took one of the broader pointed sticks and dipped it into the second, larger pot and it came out with the white tip covered in brilliant blue which he displayed to everyone and they cheered even louder. Fiyero winced, feeling every muscle tighten as he closed his eyes tight as the bamboo moved.. four quick strokes. He was concentrating on biting the inside of his cheek to keep from crying out, his hands clenched on the dirt so hard his fingers had nearly turned white.

It felt too real to Elphaba all of a sudden, as if she had suddenly grasped the concept of the blue diamonds and what they actually meant. She watched in horror as the man pushed the stick into Fiyero's chest and drew the outline of one small diamond right in the place above where his heart was. She felt her eyes burn with tears as rivulets of dark blood ran down his chest, but the man merely wiped them away as if they were bothersome sweat and continued to tap the shoot to disperse the ink into the outline. She wanted to scream but her throat was too dry and she swallowed. The best she could do was to whisper out a ragged, "Yero!" before her eyes overflowed an she buried her face in Peerless' shoulder. He looked down at her in concern and gently wrapped his arm around her and gave her a soft squeeze.

Fiyero's eyes opened for a brief moment when he heard the sound of her voice and he looked for her in the crowd of people, not taking long to locate her, but she wasn't looking anymore. She had buried her face in her Grandfather's shoulder and he felt a strong urge to run out of the circle and go take her in his arms and tell her everything was fine, that this wasn't nearly as bad as she thought. She looked like she was getting the diamonds instead of him. His heart thudded painfully as he resisted the urge to put his thoughts into action. He would find her after this. No matter how much he was hurting he'd find her and let her know that he was alright. He refused to let Elphaba think he wasn't okay. He just needed to think about Elphaba and then he didn't have to think about this. He closed his eyes and swallowed. He pictured her face the way she was that day she fell asleep in the grass. He pictured her hand clasped in his, her long, delicate fingers, the curve of her graceful neck, her jaw and the edge of her ear peeking out from under her long hair. It was numbing now and he was beginning to feel alright. His whole arm and chest and side were completely numb now… much better indeed……

~*~

Elphaba felt upset and emotionally raw by the end of the ceremony. She had been going to see Fiyero, but he was surrounded in a crowd of well wishers and she highly doubted that she needed to add to that list. Likely he just wanted to go and lay down if there was a spot on his body he could lay on without pain, that was. She just felt cold and like her muscles didn't want to move. It was not a feeling she had ever experienced before and it was not a good feeling, not in the least. It was a feeling like… well.. the feeling that came from wishing that you had been hurt instead of someone else. If Elphaba had been older and wiser she might have known that it was the feeling that comes of seeing someone you love hurt, but she did not realize this.

When she arrived at the outside of her tent she heard voices that, while she normally would have left and tried to avoid the gossip and hurtful speech, she didn't even bother tonight. "So Rude!.. interrupting the sanctity of a sacred ritual!" Ebele exclaimed in a low tone of disbelief. "And the way she said his name, not even his full first name mind you but 'Yero' sounds so common and.. .and vulgar! I can't imagine that he didn't get right up and smack her in the face. I would have done but it's not as though I could reach her from across three benches! Oh my goodness! It's just.. that's horrifying that anyone could act like that and that the prince would put up with it! Goodness. Well he certainly isn't going to have that kind of disrespect from the commoners when I'm married to him. We'll be respected as a monarch is meant to be respected and live in Kiamo Ko all of the time instead of this ridiculous moving around all over the Vinkus like the rest of the tribe. Ughh I'm so thankful there's probably one more summer of this.. if that much left and then I expect The Prince was only waiting until he'd had his diamonds to propose to me. That Thropp girl really must think she's something to act like that around MY future husband! HA! Really, to believe she has a chance with the Prince of the Arjiki tribe. I'm amazed he hasn't sent her packing back to wherever she's from. I hear she was raised with Quadlings. How unsanitary! Ew.. the very thought. Such an insolent, rude, poor misguided girl. Really.. I pity her." She tried to make her voice low and syrupy but the best she could manage was oily. Trying to make herself sound honestly sorry for the girl she was maligning.

Elphaba roughly shoved aside the tent flap at this point and entered the tent with a look on her face that roughly resembled a March cyclone. Her brows were pulled down and her eyebrows were furrowed, her expression less than impressed as she fixed her glare on Ebele and just stared without blinking. She was furious and you could tell. Her lips were bit into a thin greenish-grey line.

"Can I help you?" Ebele asked smugly, putting her hands on her hips.

"You can't even help yourself." Elphaba muttered sarcastically as she turned to unmake her hammock.

"Can't help myself?" She muttered, confused. She didn't get the new girl's sense of wit and it was likely none of her followers did as well.

"Yes.." Elphaba muttered, beginning to change into her pajamas and just trying not to look at them. The sooner she got into her pajamas and leaped into bed and got to sleep the sooner she wouldn't need to deal with Elphaba and her ridiculousness. Elphaba was getting tired of being berated by this crew of immature little girls all of the time that was for certain. She just bit her tongue and said nothing.

"We were wondering if we could ask you a question Elphie deearrr." Ebele murmured as sweetly as possible.

"What?" Elphaba asked guardedly.

"Well your family is a little… different. Unorthodox.. if you follow my meaning." The girl said with a little grin.

"I.. suppose." She responded, being even more guarded at this point, completely unsure where this bash fest was going to go.

"I mean.. your grandfather or is he your great grandfather.. he's awfully old right? Probably nearly a couple of hundred years. Ancient really, 'bout ready to kick the bucket if you ask me. He's so ridiculous, this whole thing about cooperation between our people as if Munchkinlanders could ever truly understand Winkies. He's gone soft and feeble minded in his ancient age to ever assume you could be the ruler of a section of Oz. HA. Or maybe he was just desperate for an heir. I guess your family must have disappointed him pretty badly for him to settle for you. I mean your father he's what? .. a minister who let's see.. never works because his congregation tried to massacre him because of some stupid clock that said they should. Gee he must not have been very good at his work right? And your mother.. she was a ridiculous rich girl who was a severe disappointment as the Thropp second descending as she snuck off to marry your father but couldn't keep her legs together so she slept with a Quadling glassblower and out popped a little crippled bastard--.."

It happened before Elphaba could control it. She didn't know what had happened.. it just happened when she got really really angry. There was a bang and the entire tent shook as her hand came across Ebele's sly face as hard as it possibly could and then the girl was picked up as if by an invisible hand and dropped unceremoniously, painfully really… The lantern slid off the table as if shoved by an invisible hand. There was a wind in the middle of the tent that wasn't coming from the trees but instead, seemed to be emanating from Elphaba herself. It was whipping her long hair around her face. Her eyes had gone as cold as ice as she glared at the girl, hands placed on her hips. Her face in that moment was so honestly terrifying that all of them stopped as they looked up at her. "How DARE you insult my Grandfather.. or Nessa for that matter!! HOW DARE YOU!?"

"What's she doing Ebele.. what's she doing?!"

"I don't suppose.. I ever told you… that I can make things happen?" She hissed low.

"N…n..no."

"Or that I found a book in the attic at Colwen Grounds.. from the Other World with spells in it… it's purple with silver writing. No one else can read it but me.. I know every word that it says and I could do things to you that would make you run far far away and never come back here." Okay maybe she was exaggerating, actually, the Grimmerie was very difficult to read and she could not read every word, but she could read it and no one else could.. and there were very terrifying spells in it.

"I… I think you're lying." One of the girls whispered, but the look on her face told the truth and Elphaba giggled in a slightly hysterical way one does when they are so furious they are laughing.

"Do you want to test that theory? Really?" And then she began to chant. At first it was quiet… muttering under her breath faster and faster. "Irka jira.. myera… festim ghiretper." She breathed low. It didn't sound like the beautiful spells from the Grimmerie, one of which had kept one of the maids on the ceiling for upwards of an hour by accident… but … still.. the means achieved their ends when Ebele, followed by her stupid little friends screamed like banshees at the tops of their lungs and ran from the tent as if they'd been possessed, running through the camp at breakneck speeds, each in search of their own families' tents.

Elphaba watched them go in satisfaction before she looked at the tent with everything scattered about and collapsed to the ground as weakness from the use of magic left her weak and shaking. "It wasn't even a real spell.. .the idiots." She muttered with a long sigh, exhaustedly bringing her hands up to cover her face before leaning over to blow out the lantern. She was too shaky to stand, her limbs too weak and so she stayed there in the grass, it cooling her hot, flushed face. She was still breathing hard. Her mind was racing with thoughts about everything that had happened and she felt as though she was on information overload. Too much had happened all at once and she just felt too full. Her eyes burned with tears that fell into the grass. It would be easier to just leave and go home. That was what she felt like doing right now but knew that she could not. She had to act like a grown up, though she had to admit the display she had just put on, pretending to curse a girl.. was hardly adult and would probably come back to haunt her eventually, but right now she didn't really care. She wondered where Fiyero was and if he was alright, if they had given him any medicine to dull the pain of the tattoos and hoped that he was alright.

Slowly she stretched out her hand in the grass with it open, palm facing up and tried to imagine herself back on a hill face in the warm sun, far from the camp, laying still as the sun poured down on them and the feeling of his hand gently clasped in hers with their fingers entwining together to put just the gentlest pressure on her fingers. She could just almost feel it.. as if he was there with her and he really could feel him there, just like that day that seemed almost a lifetime ago now. Had it really only been a few days? Not possible. Where were that Fae and that Yero now? She didn't know and the realization scared her a little bit. She didn't know what was going to happen now.

* * *

Wow.. sorry erm.. that went a bit longer than I expected but um yeah... I couldn't think of a reall good place to split it up. Ahem yeah. So what did you think of the Blue Diamond Ceremony? I personally enjoyed writing that part. I always wanted Maguire to tell us about the Blue Diamonds and that was the whole original concept for this fic. So ending the ceremony puts me just about halfway through my plot. I'm set to win Nano though because I have like.. 47k almost? and it needs to be 50 by monday at midnight so I should be good. Yeah super excited about that. Ebele almost caused her own death though. She got a little nastier than I told her she could be. I wasn't really planning on Elphie magicking her till it just.. happened. She kept talking and wouldn't shut up and Elphie didn't want to quit so uh yeah.. that was the result. So now we clearly have defined both of our antagonists the plot continues to build. How will things change now that Fiyero is officially a man? Well.. keep reading to find out. I garuantee you there's still plenty of suspense and plot turns left. The real action is only just now beginning! Hope you enjoyed this chappie!


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